NONFICTION - Sept. 25, 1994

IN AND OUT OF FASHION by William Klein. (Random House: $65; 256 pp.) American expatriate artist William Klein has completed 15 books and portfolios, more than 200 commercials and 24 films. Five films have been made about him, yet he remains largely unknown in the U.S.; this, his 16th book, offers some indication why. Klein is arguably the most radical photographer to have infiltrated the pages of Vogue Magazine, whom he worked for from 1954-66. Influenced by cinema verite, Pop art and the Bauhaus, Klein pioneered the use of open flash, long focus and wide-angle lenses in fashion photography; his flair for technical innovation is coupled with a savagely subversive sensibility that courses through every picture he takes.

“I don’t intend that my models laugh delightedly because they’re wearing expensive dresses--perhaps as class revenge, I like these make-believe ladies to have problems,” says Klein of his models, whom he photographs so as to create a baroque parody of fashion. Born in New York in 1928 and raised during the Depression, Klein was keenly aware that it doesn’t take much exaggeration for the fashion world to read as outlandish, and he took great relish in making that apparent in his overtly contrived pictures. He clearly finds the clothing business absurd.

For those unfamiliar with Klein, this book is a great introduction. Drawn from four sources, it includes work he did for Vogue in the ‘50s and ‘60s, images from four of his films, documentary photographs and recent images shot backstage at the Paris couture. The book itself is beautifully done as well. Large, with minimal text, its images all bleed to the edge of the page, and the book seems to pick up speed as you page through it. By the time you reach the final page, you feel a little stunned--there’s so much aggression and energy in Klein’s insolent pictures that they reduce the idea of glamour to a pile of rubble.