All the World’s a Stage is the most ambitious and comprehensive exhibition of the work of William Klein (1926-2022), recognised as one of the most influential photographers of the second half of the 20th century, on the European continent since his death. Covering various aspects of his work through around 200 works - street photography, fashion, cinema, editorial production - and taking us to major cities such as New York, Paris, Rome, Moscow and Tokyo, the exhibition emphasises the performative dimension of the American photographer, highlighting the unique way in which he interacted with his models and subjects. «Everywhere we look in Klein’s extraordinary output, whether it is on his fashion pages for Vogue, in his exuberant photobooks, on the cinema screen, or on the walls of exhibitions, his exploration of performance was an animating force.» writes the curator of the exhibition David Campany, one of the most renowned contemporary researchers in the field of photography.

All the World’s a Stage is an overview of William Klein’s vast body of work, organized in five sections: Looking Back, Material Gestures, Tokyo, Films and Together.

Klein was a fiercely independent artist who was able to work at the centre of the commercial world while pursuing his passion projects. He did everything his own way, always with a great feeling for style and vitality, and for the unpredictable ways that life unfolds.

«For him, it was all one unfolding creative adventure, crossing the avant-gardes and the mainstream, finding spaces between commercial culture and staunch independence.», adds Campany.

The catalogue for the exhibition William Klein – All the World Is a Stage brings together an extensive selection of images (almost 150 works), which accompany texts by the curator, David Campany, including an extensive essay and a brief chronology of the artist's life and work. Over 188 pages, the book published by MAAT under its own imprint traces an extremely innovative body of work, covering genres as diverse as street and fashion photography, cinema, painting and graphic design, and materialised over more than six decades. The route is organised into five sections, like the exhibition, with proposals as stimulating as Klein's material experiments in painting, drawing and photography, or his incisive incursions into cinema.

In partnership with MAAT and in the context of All the World’s a Stage exhibition, a retrospective of William Klein's cinematographic work will be organised by the Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema in January 2025.

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