“I was a loser, a bad kid, I wasn’t really into anything, and then someone gave me a camera and I found that this was the thing I wanted to do.” -Steven Klein
First ad campaign
Steven Klein studied painting at RISD — Rhode Island School of Design. He thought he was not a good painter and needed some money. His first campaign was for Christian Dior.
Editorial work
Steven Klein is known for the transformational visual statements he makes of his subjects. “You give him a dress,” remarked Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, “and he will give you a girl in a dress with a robot in a garden.”
The creative director for W magazine, Dennis Freedman said of Steven Klein’s work, “…is very much in sync with the idea that things are never what they really appear.”
Steven Klein’s vision is sought after by publications and platforms worldwide. He receives regular editorial assignments from Interview, Vogue, Vogue Paris, i-D, and W.
New York Magazine said: “clever, conceptual and ultimately lyrical,” imbued with a sense of “gentle sadism.”
Alexander McQueen believed his imagery was almost “too subversive for the mainstream.” Undercurrents of vulnerability, objectification and idolatry recur throughout Klein’s photography.
Shocking
Steven Klein loves to make his photographs have an element or two of disturbing surprises. A very slender mermaid-like model swims in a pool as her companion, a thoroughbred horse stands in front of her (opening photo, bottom row, last image.) Brad Pitt’s head, eyes closed and covered in red paint is another one (opening photo, top row, first image.) Another scene is in a refrigerated locker where sides of meat hang while a model with bright red hair and tights hugs her bare upper body (opening photo, bottom row, second image.)
ICP exhibit
A show at the International Center for Photography named “Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now” ran in 2009. Its curator, Vince Aletti said of Steven Klein, “He tends to push further than any of his contemporaries.”
Aletti believes that Steven Klein’s style puts him among a handful of world-class American fashion photographers. He says the images are an “expression of his genuinely dark vision.”
Steven Klein acknowledges being influenced by the polished and at the time disturbing work of Helmut Newton (NSFW), whose own models were often in macabre situations. Ruth La Ferla writing in the New York Times notes, “Pornography, cross-dressing, nudity and gore are all part of his arsenal of subversion.”
Sources: Business of Fashion, New York Times
Read about other inspirational photographers in On Photography.
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