- 1933: Born in Brooklyn, New York
- 1955: B.A., English, Queens College, NY
- 1956: M.A., English, University of Chicago, IL
- 1964: Three photographs, including “Minneapolis Fire,” along with profile of the artist appear in Modern Photography
- 1966: Museum of Modern Art (New York City) acquire two gelatin silver prints: “Minnesota Fire” and “Super-Pop Artists”; both photographs appear in group exhibit, “Recent Acquisitions,” MoMA
- 1966: Unidentified photograph appears in “The Photographer’s Forum,” Institutio Mexicano Norteamericano Relationes Culturales
- 1967: Unidentified photograph appears in “The People’s Protest,” Columbia University, New York
- 1969: “David in the Mansion” and “Mother and Child on Williamsburg Bridge” appear in “Vision and Expression” at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. Both images appear in Nathan Lyons’ Vision and Expression, An International Survey of Contemporary Photography
- 1969: Selections from “New Settlers” exhibited at Darkroom Gallery, NYC
- 1970: Selections from “New Settlers” exhibited at Baldwin Street Gallery, Toronto
- 1973: Several photographs appear in Liberation
- 1973” Several images appear in Lloyd Kahn’s Shelter
- 1974: Died in Brooklyn
- 1974: George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, acquire seventeen prints
- 1978: “Minnesota Fire” appears in “Mirrors and Windows,” exhibition curated by John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art, New York; exhibition catalog by Szarkowski
- 1979: “Minnesota Fire” appears in Creative Camera and Photography Year book,
- 1995: “Minnesota Fire” appears in Peter Galassi’s American Photography 1890-1965, From the Museum of Modern Art
- 2003: “America Needs Indians” appear in Spiritus
- 2003: Selections appear in Irwin Klein and Alan Klein’s Emptiness without Ego
- 2004: Selections from “New Settlers” appear in Lloyd Kahn’s Homework
- 2007: Selections from “New Settlers” appear in Tim Hodgdon, Manhood in the Age of Aquarius: Masculinity in Two Countercultural Communities, 1965–83
- 2008: Image from “New Settlers” appears in Alastair Gordon’s Spaced Out
- 2009: Selections from “New Settlers” appear in Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties Counterculture
- 2009: “Last Look: The Photographs of Irwin Klein 1933-1974,” exhibition at Domeischel Gallery, New York
- 2009: Selections from “New Settlers” exhibited at Saint Albert Hall Library, Saint Mary’s College of California
- 2012: Benjamin Klein and Tim Hodgdon, “From Innocence to Experience: Irwin B. Klein and ‘The New Settlers of Northern New Mexico, 1967-71’,” New Mexico Historical Review
According to the press release for the exhibition at the Baldwin Street Gallery in 1970, Klein’s work has appeared in The Museum of Modern Art Calendar, Contemporary Photography (published by George Eastman House), M.I.T. Creative Photography Gallery (“The American Urban Middle Class”), Amherst College (“Photographer’s Choice”), the Darkroom Gallery in NYC, and the Salt Lake Art Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.
