Image: HackelBury Fine Art, London
HackelBury Fine Art in London will open a major retrospective of William Klein in September 2026, marking the centenary of the photographer, filmmaker and painter’s birth. Running from 9 September 2026 to 2 February 2027, ‘William Klein: 100’ is described by the gallery as one of the most comprehensive presentations of his work in London in recent years.
The exhibition brings together street photography, fashion imagery, portraits, early abstract works and later painted contact sheets. According to HackelBury, the selection is intended to trace Klein’s radical reinvention of photography and his enduring influence on post-war visual culture. The gallery also says the retrospective will include classic films, rare works and a display of more than 300 pieces from the William Klein estate.
Klein’s work is presented here as spanning several modes of image-making rather than a single body of photography. The gallery’s overview notes that he studied painting under Fernand Léger in Paris before turning to photography, and that his early geometric abstractions shaped his interest in light, form, movement and graphic composition. Those concerns later fed into both his photography and filmmaking, and the retrospective is set to show how those practices remained connected across decades.
A key part of that story is Klein’s work for Vogue from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, when he moved fashion photography out of the studio and into the street. HackelBury highlights that shift as a break with convention, along with his later use of light and double exposure. The exhibition also follows his return to filmmaking and street photography, where his deliberately grainy, blurred style and wide-angle lens became part of a visual language tied to urban life.
The show will also foreground the city as a recurring setting in Klein’s work. HackelBury’s text describes New York, Paris and London as charged theatres of crowds, signage, glamour and confrontation, and says fashion becomes a form of performance in which gesture, flash and movement function like a graphic line. Alongside the still images, references to movement, fragmentation and narrative are said to echo through Klein’s films, including ‘Broadway by Light’ and ‘Who Are You, Polly Maggoo’.
The gallery’s announcement ties the retrospective to Klein’s long-term engagement with both photography and film, ending with the idea of his later painted contact sheets, in which enlarged and overpainted frames transform familiar images into works of their own. The exhibition at HackelBury Fine Art, 4 Launceston Place, London W8 5RL, is scheduled to run from 9 September 2026 to 2 February 2027.
