Outside the lines

Photos by William Klein

I have always loved the amateur side of photography, automatic photographs, accidental photographs with uncentered compositions, heads cut off, whatever. I incite people to make their self-portraits. I see myself as their walking photo booth.

Sometimes, I'd take shots without aiming, just to see what happened. I'd rush into crowds - bang! Bang! I liked the idea of luck and taking a chance, other times I'd frame a composition I saw and plant myself somewhere, longing for some accident to happen.

If you look carefully at life, you see blur. Shake your hand. Blur is part of life.

I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In Vogue, girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton.