Alan Kleinberg emerged as an important photographer of his time, following in the footsteps of his mentors Saul Leiter and Richard Avedon, by being a keen observer of the downtown scene in New York City. Starting in the fashion world, by the late 1970s he moved into documenting every aspect of the vibrant downtown art and music scene that defined creative culture for subsequent generations of artists.
Together with Zbigniew Rybczynski, Kleinberg also produced music videos for Grandmaster Flash, Chuck Mangione, Rickie Lee Jones and David Byrne. Their 1984 video for The Art of Noise single “Close (to the Edit)” won MTV Video Music Awards for Most Experimental Video and Best Editing. Kleinberg’s film work with Rybczynski got him noticed by Jim Jarmusch, who hired him to work as the producer of the motion picture Down By Law in 1985.