American photographer William Klein, who made his mark with imagery of fashion and urban life, has died in Paris aged 96, his son Pierre Klein said in a statement Monday. Klein, whose striking depictions of the restlessness and violence of city life helped revolutionize photography, died “peacefully” on Saturday, the statement said. Celebrated as one of the 20th century’s most influential artists, Klein also worked in film and fashion. His death comes on the final day of a retrospective exhibit at New York’s International Center of Photography, which celebrated the multifaceted artist’s six-decade-plus career, including his time as a famed street and fashion photographer, bookmaker, abstract artist, documentary filmmaker and celebrity portraitist. “According to his wishes, the funeral will be a very intimate event,” Pierre Klein said, although he added that there will be a later public memorial for his father. Klein’s imagery was inspired by tabloid sensationalism, overturning established styles in street and fashion photography – including as one of the first to depict models outside studio backdrops. His mostly black-and-white work plays with off-center subjects and boosted contrast, with young men brandishing weapons at point-blank range or scowling faces seen in closeup, sometimes out of focus. “Klein is one of those legendary photographers who made his own rules, like Man Ray,” said Alain Genestar, head of the French photography magazine Polka. “People always look at the camera in his pictures, because he believed that people’s eyes do not lie,” Genestar said. Considered one of the fathers of street photography, Klein achieved widespread fame in the 1960s for his bold fashion shoots at Vogue and for wildly inventive photo essays on cities including New York, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow and Rome. Born into a New York family of ultra-Orthodox Jews in 1926 in upper Manhattan, Klein explored the city’s art museums as a teenager and longed to travel to Europe. He joined the US army during the second world war and was stationed in Germany and then France, where he permanently relocated after his service. By 1948, Klein was studying painting under Fernand Léger at the Sorbonne in Paris, but turned to photography after winning his first camera in a poker game. He gained international fame in the early 1960s for a series of photo books on urban life, with raw, blurred photos of energy and movement that showed little interest in traditional composition. The first, Life Is Good & Good for You in New York (1956), was a sensation in France but earned opprobrium from critics and other photographers. “They just didn’t get it,” he told the Observer in 2012. “They thought it should not have been published, that it was vulgar and somehow sinned against the great sacred tradition of the photography book. They were annoyed for sure.” The book went on to become a classic which disrupted the tradition of understated observation. In 1965, Klein pivoted to film, eventually directing 27 short and feature length documentaries and filming such figures as Muhammad Ali and Little Richard. His three feature films – Who Are You, Polly Magoo? (1966), Mister Freedom (1968) and The Model Couple (1977) – satirized the worlds of fashion, politics and consumerism. Director Orson Welles declared Klein’s first film, Broadway by Lights (1958) – a document of illuminated signs in Times Square – as the first movie that truly needed to be in color. Klein later filmed Muhammad Ali for Cassius the Great (1964), re-edited with new footage as Muhammad Ali, The Greatest in 1969. A longtime fan of tennis, he also directed The French (1982), a documentary about the French Open. Klein lived in France since he met his wife, Jeanna Florin, when they both were 18. The couple remained together until her death, in 2005. “Our relationship was the love affair of the century. We met when we were 18 and we were together for more than 50 years. That’s Paris,” he told the Guardian in 2014. “As a kid, I wanted to be part of the Lost Generation who came to France. Hang out at the Coupole with Picasso and Giacometti.” Asked if he felt French, Klein said he did not. “But I’m at home with the French,” he said. “Hanging out with Americans: for me, that sucks.”