William Klein
Fighter Painter, Shinohara, Tokyo

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Images(3)

Artist William Klein (French, born United States, 1926–2022)French, born United States, 1926–2022

CultureAmerican

Titles

Fighter Painter, Shinohara, Tokyo

Date1961, printed 1982

Place depictedTokyo, Japan

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 13 11/16 × 9 5/8 in. (34.8 × 24.4 cm)
Sheet: 15 3/4 × 11 3/4 in. (40 × 29.8 cm)

Credit LineThe Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection

Object number91.774

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Special Collections

Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionIn 1961, William Klein was invited to Tokyo, where his photographic book New York (1956) had already become a cult classic for its graphic boldness and high-energy style mixing documentation and personal diary. Over the course of three months, in more than 1,000 photographs, Klein captured the congestion, chaos, and strange coexistence of traditional and contemporary culture that characterized Tokyo at the dawn of the turbulent 1960s. His off-kilter, out-of-focus, grainy images served as a bridge between American street photography and postwar Japanese camera work, giving license to a new generation of Japanese photographers, like Daidō Moriyama. Here, Klein captured the boxing-painting performance by Ushio Shinohara, in which the artist dipped boxing gloves in sumi ink and punched paper in order to splatter it with pigment, with the artist Masanobu Yoshimura, both members of the art collective called Neo Dada Organizers.
ProvenanceAllan Chasanoff, New York; given to MFAH, 1991.
Exhibition History"Tradition and the Unpredictable: The Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Upper Jones and Wiess Galleries; January 16-March 27, 1994.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

verso bottom edge in pencil " Tokyo 1961- Shinohara- Fighter painter "

verso bottom right in pencil " William Klein 1982 "

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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