Created in 2018, the Académie des beaux-arts – William Klein Photography Award Foundation is submitted to funding this photography prize.
The Académie des beaux-arts – William Klein Photography Award is created in 2019 with the support of the Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum, in tribute to the work of William Klein, photographer, painter, visual artist and film director. It rewards a photographer, of any nationality or age, whose career and work illustrate an outstanding commitment to documentary photography.
This biennial prize is worth 120 000 euros. It is awarded alternately with the Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière – Académie des beaux-arts Photography Award.
The Governing board
The Académie des beaux-arts’ board
Laurent Petitgirard, secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie des beaux-arts, president of the Foundation
Sebastião Salgado, member of the Académie des beaux-arts
Jean Gaumy, member of the Académie des beaux-arts
The Founder’s board
Zhong Weixing, vice-president
Jean-Luc Monterosso, correspondent of the Académie des beaux-arts
Xiwen Zaho
William Klein (1926-2022)
Photographer, painter and filmmaker, William Klein is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Born in New York in 1928, he grew up in Manhattan. In 1954 he started a photographic diary. Ignoring taboos, he used wide angles, grain, blur, contrast, and unusual framing. The result was his first book, Life is Good and Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels. The book was published in Paris, London, and Rome in 1956, but not in New York, as it was considered too violent and unflattering for the United States. It won the Nadar Prize in France. In 1958 William Klein shot Broadway by Light, the first pop film, and in the mid-sixties he gave up photography for cinema. He returned to photography in the 1980s, exhibiting all over the world and publishing a dozen books. In 2008, he published Contacts, a collection of his most important photographs revisited through paintings on enlarged contacts. In December 2005, the Centre Pompidou opened a major retrospective of his work and co-published a 400-page book. In 2012, the Tate Modern in London dedicated an exhibition to him entitled 'William Klein + Daido Moriyama', followed by exhibitions at Foam in Amsterdam (2013), the Abbatiale Saint-Ouen in Rouen (2016), the Palazzo della Ragione in Milan (2016), C/O Berlin (2017), the Fundacion Telefonica in Madrid (2019) and La Pedrera in Barcelona (2020). William Klein's work has marked the history of photography and deeply influenced two generations of photographers and filmmakers.
Winners since 2018
