With a Vogue cover girl for a mother and a director of television commercials for a father, a career in front or behind the lens was inevitable for Kelly Klein. After a brief stint modelling, Klein worked as assistant designer for Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, the latter of whom she married in 1986 while on a fabric buying trip to Italy. While the couple divorced after 20 years of marriage, she forged a career as a photographer, shooting editorials for Harper’s Bazaar and Interview, along with multiple editions of Vogue. But Klein is known as a socialite (as well as fashion) photographer, having taken many intimate portraits of celebrities and members of her own star-studded social circles.
While she has six coffee table books to her name, Photographs by Kelly Klein – published by Rizzoli – is the first book of her own photography. “Kelly is an instinctively creative person, intensely engaged with the world around her, and she has a remarkable ability to find the beauty in everyday things,” writes style and image director for Estée Lauder, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer in the foreword, “This book is a portrait of her life in pictures.” Spanning her illustrious 25-year career as a photographer, the tome captures the spirit of the 90s and 00s fashion, along with a roster of famous faces – from supermodels Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bundchen, Carolyn Murphy and Stella Tennant to assassinated president JFK and author Fran Lebovitz.
‘Photographs by Kelly Klein’ is published by Rizzoli priced at £75.00.
