From street to fashion to portraiture, Vogue shooter William Klein reinvented photography – you must see these incredible images

An exceptional exhibition of William Klein's work is currently on display at Hackelbury Fine Art in London, showcasing the photographer's diverse range of talents, from street photography to fashion, portraits, abstract works, and painted contact sheets. Klein, who initially studied painting under Fernand Léger in Paris, brought his visual language and experimental approach to photography, which was greatly influenced by his early geometric abstractions.

His work for Vogue in the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s revolutionized the fashion genre by taking models out of the studio and onto the street, breaking away from conventional fashion photography. Klein's innovative use of light and double exposures further distinguished his fashion photography, as he once explained, "First, I would shoot the model.

She would hold the pose, then we’d turn off all the lights in the studio. In a second exposure, lasting just a few seconds, an assistant would use a flashlight to draw shapes in the air around the model’s body. The result was terrific – it brought my early abstract experiments into my fashion work."

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