In 1956, William Klein, who had recently published his now classic Life Is Good & Good for You in New York, arrived in Rome to assist Federico Fellini on his film Nights of Cabiria (1957). Since the start of filming was delayed, Klein instead strolled about the city with Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia, and other avant-garde Italian writers and artists serving as his guides. It was on these walks that Rome, (Aperture, October 2009), a radical and brilliant visual diary of the city, was born. First published in 1959, Klein’s Rome features the quirky extended captions that distinguished his New York book, interspersed with observations about the city by Stendhal, Michelet, Mark Twain, Henry James, and others. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Rome’s release, Aperture, in close collaboration with Contrasto, is pleased to publish a revised edition.
This beautifully produced edition includes Klein’s never-before-seen fashion pictures made in Rome, along with new and updated text by the photographer. Now redesigned to encompass two volumes in a special slipcase, this new edition offers audiences another chance to celebrate this groundbreaking work. As Fellini said, “Rome is a movie, and Klein did it.”
Embodying the same lively and revolutionary design that made Klein’s 1956 book on New York so famous, Rome introduces another generation of photography lovers to Klein’s daring and experimental work that at the time of its first publication shocked the photographic establishment to it core.
After graduating from university, WILLIAM KLEIN (born in New York, 1928) settled in Paris and became a painter. He returned to New York in 1954, and made a photographic logbook that was published two years later, and won him worldwide acclaim: Life Is Good & Good for You in New York (Prix Nadar, 1956). Later, he produced books dedicated to Tokyo, Moscow, and Paris. Painter, photographer, moviemaker, and graphic designer, Klein eludes all labels and categories.
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