Down from My Hotel Window, New York
This study of the optical effect of street lamps and car headlights at night glimpsed from a hotel room window was made during the artist’s first return to New York City after his move to Paris in 1949. Hovering between abstraction and representation in its depiction of an urban environment, the picture marks a transitional moment between Klein’s early photograms (featured on the cover of the Italian architectural and design magazine Domus) and the verve of the street photography for which he became well known. Klein soon published a groundbreaking photo-book on his birthplace, Life is Good & Good For You in New York: Trance Witness Revels (1956).
Artwork Details
- Title: Down from My Hotel Window, New York
- Artist: William Klein (American, New York 1928–2022 Paris)
- Date: 1954
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 27.7 x 35.3 cm (10 15/16 x 13 7/8 in.)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1989
- Object Number: 1989.1037.2
- Rights and Reproduction: © William Klein
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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William Klein
1954
William Klein
1956, printed 1990
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