2007 Infinity Award: Lifetime Achievement

William Klein is a native New Yorker who has lived in Paris since 1948. As a photographer and filmmaker, Klein has influenced visual media in the U.S. and Europe for the better part of a century. During the 1950s and 1960s, he pioneered a new kind of street photography: to represent the fragmented urban chaos that was his subject, he produced work that was grainy, blurry, and distorted via wide-angle lenses, fast film, and unique framing and printing. His first book, Life is Good and Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels (1956) is widely considered to be one of the most important photography books ever published. Klein's many films, including Broadway by Light (1958), the first Pop film; Who are you Polly Maggoo? (1965-66), Muhammad Ali the Greatest (1969-74), and The Messiah (2000), comprise another important body of work for the artist, as does his fashion photography for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.