William Klein: Life Is Good & Good For You In New York

by William Klein, Max Kozloff

William Klein's Life is Good & Good for You in New York is regarded as one of the most influential and groundbreaking photo-books created in the last half-century. Published in 1956, its visual energy captured the rough-and-tumble streets of New York--a city Klein once described as -the world capital of anguish---like no photo-book had done before or since. Robert Capa famously declared that if your photographs were no good it was because you were not close enough to your subject, and in Klein's New York people press themselves up against the lens, dance around it, pull faces, pretend to shoot each other--a visual chaos which is rigorously organized by Klein's -one American eye and one European eye, - as he once characterized his style. Books on Books 5 reproduces in its entirety Klein's brilliantly photographed and designed magnum opus.
Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction

160 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Cristhian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Puedo entender el porqué fue una inspiración para muchos pero la edición qué encontré no tenía muy buenas reproducciones de sus fotos, una lástima.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot really afford to get the original editions of classic photo books, due to a problem with the currency market. So in that regard, I'm entirely grateful for Errata Editions doing a series of books on Photo book classics. One such priceless book (in its original edition) is William Klein's powerful images of New York City, "Life is Good & Good For You in New York." In 1956, Klein got Vogue magazine to back him in photographic images of the city, by giving him studio space, film, and a darkroom. Vogue turned down the final assignment due that it was crazed and perhaps anti-American. Which is true. The images convey the world in violent motion. Every ethnic face is represented in this book, and the photographs and even more important, the layout of the book captures the dynamics of a multi-cultural city in its neighborhoods.

This is not the glamorous life of Manhattan, but more for its noir sensibility. For one, there are images of children throughout the book, but they are not cute little tykes. A lot of them are holding toy guns or toy rifles. It looks like they have murder in their eyes, and these small citizens are surrounded by every type of signage or advertisements possible. There are no rest periods except for an occasional blank page that is the opposite of a photo page. The images themselves are always moving or sensing time is being spent. A very cinematic book that uses many pictures of passing movie theater marquees - and always in the nighttime.

Klein had an eye for faces. It was no mistake that Fellini hired Klein to photograph stills for one of his films. Klein understands the surreal dynamic of crowds and the individual faces within the grouping. He not only edited his work, but even more important he designed the books as well. I have a small collection of his 'city' books, and all of them are beautifully designed. His page layouts are unique, and they resemble the N.Y. artists of the 1950s. Motherwell, Pollack, and especially Franz Kline. There is a painted like quality to Klein's photographs and design.

Errata Editions has a fascinating series "Books on Books." Not only in the service of people like me who can't afford rare edition photo books but also a biography of specific titles, like for instance, "Life is Good & Good for You in New York." Smaller in size than the original edition, but each page of the book is re-photographed, so the viewer/reader gets the exact idea what that book looks like. Then there are the original introductions, for example, William Klein's commentary on the photos, as well as information if one is a visitor to New York. Weather, hotel, and restaurant news. I suspect that this is very much a tongue-in-the-cheek commentary. Also a wonderful essay on the making of the book and the importance of William Klein's work as a photographer and filmmaker. Superb.

[Barry Stoch · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really frustrated when multiple 2 page spreads were printed on 1 page in this book that was portrait oriented to begin with, so you ended up with a lot of compressed high contrast images affecting IQ

[Raffaele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un capolavoro assoluto del libro fotografico.
Inventivo e geniale, stimolante ed estremamente intelligente​!