William Klein

I’ve been reading Aperture Conversations – interviews with various photographers that appeared in Aperture between 1985 and 2018. I’m picking out quotes in the interviews that I’m reading. Like the following quote from William Klein who was talking about his book Brooklyn with Aaron Schuman. He had mentioned that he always thought of Brooklyn as “Hicksville” because he was a Manhattan person.

There were things that happened in Brooklyn that I don’t think could happen anywhere else. One night we were watching a [minor-league] doubleheader: the Brooklyn Cyclones against the Staten Island Yankees. Staten Island, can you imagine? How can they be Yankees? Anyhow, we were watching the doubleheader and a guy came over. He recognized me and said, “I’m a Czech rabbi. I came over to Brooklyn in 1980, and I remember the 1985 playoffs like it was yesterday. Do you remember that?” And I said, “No, I don’t.” [laughs] And here’s this Czech rabbi reminiscing about the playoffs in 1985, and he said, “Do you want to see a Hasidic prayer session?” And I said, “Sure.” And this was at, like, midnight. So we went there, and they all had fur hats on; this was in August. And they said, “Okay, you can take photographs, but no faces.” Then after a while they relented and started coming over to me, saying, “Take a picture of that guy—he’s got an incredible face!” That was the weirdest evening I’ve had in a long time.