Streetwise Paris.(photographer William Klein explores Paris, France)(Brief Article)

Ten years ago, Jean-Luc Monterosso, director of the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris, asked American photographer William Klein to do a comprehensive study of the city. Klein, who broke into photography 40 years ago with his landmark reportage on his hometown of New York, begged off. "I thought I knew too much and not enough," he said at his Montparnasse studio the other day. "When I did 'New York' it was about my discovery of photography--my first pictures--and my rediscovery of my old neighborhood." He could not think of what he could say about Paris that would be interesting or new.

Monterosso nevertheless continued to periodically pitch the idea to Klein. Finally four years ago, in the midst of "postproduction blues," as he put it, after his latest film project, "Messiah," Klein gave in and embarked on a journey through the city he has called home for almost half a century. The result is "Paris + Klein," a sprawling exhibition that runs through Sept. 1, and an accompanying large-format book published by Marval. "I've noticed that in general the Paris of photographers, even that of the greatest, was romantic, foggy and above all, ethnically homogenous," Klein writes in "Paris + Klein." "But for me, Paris was, as much as and perhaps more than New York, a melting pot. A cosmopolitan city, multicultural and totally multiethnic, whatever Le Pen thinks."

For the show, Klein picked a few classic images from his youth in Paris--four old chaps in bowlers at the Longchamps racecourse, a model in an Yves Saint Laurent dress mingling with wax figures of Napoleon and his court--and updated them with fresh shots of today: four young pompous men in bowlers at Longchamps, Paris debutantes clad in couture scurrying about the Hotel de Crillon. He then walked the streets--his favorite place to shoot--and snapped everything he encountered: protests, funerals, marathons, political rallies, cafes, outdoor markets, football games, gay-pride parades. He presents many of the photos in a new format: enlarged snatches of contact sheets, which Klein paints with large, sloppy brushstrokes of red and green, like a photographer's grease-pencil marks. He wanted to show "the ...