William Klein + Daido Moriyama exhibition, Tate Modern

Having straddled the realms of both gritty street photography and fashion since the early 1950s, William Klein's work is a contrary mix of aggressive realism and chic Vogue portraiture, which, in light of the artists inherently antagonistic disposition towards the fashion industry (and, indeed, everything else), I always felt my anarchistic side gravitate towards with a sense of angry-at-everyone idolatry.

William Klein

My appreciation for Klein can be gleaned from this comprehensive retrospective, which documents both his documentary photographs, films - and the fashion work he carried out in order to finance them. This is not to say, however, that his fashion work doesn't matter. It's very inclusion is warranted by the fact Klein's attitude towards fashion allowed him to engage it with a distinct freedom and with an aesthetic approach that was like a fresh pair of eyes for the industry. His photographs from Vogue demand precedence in the first room of the exhibition as much as his New York images, and their interrelation with one another throughout show how distinctly "Klein" his aesthetic really is.

The exhibition pushed to show how Klein consistently re-invents himself by re-inventing his work. Starting with a room dedicated to his beginnings as an abstract painter, the gallery space guides the viewer through his experimental films and into a final space showing blown-up contact sheets of some of his most famous photographs, painted with lines to illustrate the editing process as one does in a darkroom. Though not, perhaps, as interesting as his Ali documentary or his Tokyo work (Which were the highlights for me), they were certainly an interesting insight into Klein's methods and working process as an artist, and brought the exhibition full cycle, ending, effectively, with the images with which it began.
(There's currently a documentary about the work and life of William Klein on BBC iPlayer showing til Christmas.)

William Klein

The work of Daido Moriyama (a Japanese photographer inspired by Klein) is apparently relatively unknown in the UK, so one can only assume his inclusion in the exhibition alongside Klein was to illustrate the profound influence Klein has had worldwide and in the realm of Photography. Moriyama's work, however, far from being a mere add-on, proved to have its own distinctness and melancholic aesthetic captured off the backstreets of Tokyo.
Prior to attending the exhibition I read on a pamphlet or website somewhere that Moriyama had, alongside his street photography, started a new project dedicated to the lips and legs of women. I was concerned I might be about to witness some invasive and disturbing work on par with Nobuyoshi Araki, but actually found these images to be quite pleasing. Injected with a certain eroticism, sure, but largely taken at the point of abstraction and further salvaged by the inherent properness of a well curated gallery space.
Like Klein, Moriyama's retrospective delved into his different projects outside the main canon of his street photographs. Again, these projects didn't have such a profound effect on me - especially one which collated his 'unused/damaged//discarded' negatives across a single wall. (As someone who was lectured on the sanctity of negatives over a 2 year period at college, I still find it hard to consider their physical destruction either necessary or as Art.)

The documentaries dedicated to each photographer at the end of the show also showed Moriyama as endorsing digital technology to aid the output of his work. Whilst I was mildly put-out to see an artist who's work in the previous rooms had struck me quite strongly avidly grayscaling his work on Photoshop, I was nonetheless impressed by this photographer who prior to my visit had remained a mystery to me.

Daido Moriyama