Simone Daillencourt and Nina Devos model for Italian designer Roberto Capucci in Rome’s
Piazza di Spagna in 1960. Photograph: William Klein

The big picture: ​William Klein captures ​geometric elegance in Rome

The photographer, who died last week, balances ​monochrome cool and traffic chaos in this striking image of two Vogue models

Tim Adams
Sunday 18 September 2022

B

y 1960, when he took this picture for French Vogue, William Klein had established himself as one of those artists who might help to define the look of the decade to come. Klein was born two days before the Queen in 1926 and died last week two days after her. He first made a name for himself in the 1950s with street pictures of the outer boroughs of New York, full of stylish visual irony and hard-won pathos.

William Klein and Daido Moriyama / Two in One at Tate

Heading into the Tate Modern exhibition. 

William Klein and Daido Moriyama

TWO IN ONE AT TATE

Tate’s current ‘blockbuster’ brings together the works of William Klein and Daido Moriyama, exploring modern urban life in New York and Tokyo from 1950s to the present day.  The exhibition seeks to demonstrate the visual affinity between their urgent, blurred and grainy styles of photography and also their shared desire to convey street life and political protest, from anti-war demonstrations and gay pride marches to the effects of globalisation and urban deprivation.