William Klein: In Your Face! marks a long-awaited return of one of photography’s most disruptive voices to Los Angeles, presented at Peter Fetterman Gallery from January 10 to May 16, 2026. This major exhibition revisits Klein’s radical vision with fresh urgency, offering audiences an unfiltered encounter with an artist who refused refinement in favor of truth, movement, and confrontation.
Born in New York and creatively forged between America and postwar Paris,
William Klein developed a visual language that rejected polite distance. His photographs surge forward with abrasive closeness, fractured compositions, and a sense of lived immediacy. Rather than imposing order, Klein welcomed disorder, allowing the unpredictability of the street to shape the image. Faces collide with the lens, gestures blur, and grain becomes a form of expression, mirroring the pulse of modern life.
The exhibition traces Klein’s break from traditional photographic elegance and his embrace of the raw spectacle of everyday existence. Long dismissed by American publishers for being too aggressive and too honest, his work instead found resonance among those who recognized photography as a living, breathing act. Klein photographed not what society aspired to be, but what it was—loud, contradictory, restless, and alive.
Klein’s influence extends far beyond the gallery wall. His revolutionary photobooks reshaped how images could be sequenced and experienced, transforming the book into a cinematic, immersive object. This same rebellious spirit carried into his fashion photography, where models stepped into the street and couture met chaos. In doing so, Klein forever altered the visual grammar of magazines, proving that elegance could coexist with friction.
William Klein: In Your Face! brings together decades of visual audacity, reminding viewers that photography’s power lies in its ability to confront rather than comfort. In an age of polished surfaces and curated realities, Klein’s work feels more relevant than ever—an enduring call to look harder, step closer, and accept the world in all its unruly intensity.
Image:
William Klein 1928-2022
Gun 1, New York, 1955
© The Estate of William Klein, Courtesy of Peter Fetterman Gallery