Down from My Hotel Window, New York

William Klein

1954 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

This study of the optical effect of street lamps and car headlights at night glimpsed from a hotel room window was made during the artist’s first return to New York City after his move to Paris in 1949. Hovering between abstraction and representation in its depiction of an urban environment, the picture marks a transitional moment between Klein’s early photograms (featured on the cover of the Italian architectural and design magazine Domus) and the verve of the street photography for which he became well known. Klein soon published a groundbreaking photo-book on his birthplace, Life is Good & Good For You in New York: Trance Witness Revels (1956).

Artist

William Klein

Date

1954

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1989