He's the pioneer of street style photography and a New York icon. We chart the career of legendary snapper, Bill Cunningham.
Right now they’re so prolific that you could be forgiven for thinking that the realm of style-setting street photography is a modern phenomenon, pioneered by the likes of Scott Schuman and Tommy Ton. But you would be wrong. In fact the man who is responsible for the first shots of the best dressed of out on city streets has been happily snapping for over 50 years. His name? Bill Cunningham.
In New York Bill Cunningham is an institution. At over 80 years old he’s still a familiar sight at fashion week, dashing from show to show on his bicycle, taking photos of the most stylish from teenage style-setters to fashion’s greats – even Anna Wintour has said in the past that Cunningham is the person that she gets dressed for.
He hasn’t always been best known for his photography. Cunningham kick started his career back in the late 1940s as a milliner, making outlandish and glamorous straw and feathered creations that were worn by the cream of the capital’s society and that landed on the pages of glossy magazines.
Then, in the 1960s, he turned his attention to the typewriter, writing for first the Chicago Tribune and then WWD. His opinion was well respected, his knowledge of fashion encyclopaedic and he seemed to know everyone in New York. He was a champion of new designers – legend has it that he was the first in America to write about Azzedine Alaia and Jean Paul Gaultier.
He always loved to be behind a camera but in the 1970s he started shooting the ladies whose looks caught his eye on the streets of New York. One day at the end of 1978, as the story goes, he snapped the incredibly elusive Greta Garbo hurrying along a sidewalk, and the next day the New York Times printed it alongside a selection of his other photos. He’s never looked back, and he’s still taking photographs for the Times, printed each Sunday in the Style section.
Cunningham is currently the subject of a much-talked about and long in the making documentary – it took director Richard Press over a decade to persuade hinm to take part. And such is the well of affection that the fashion world has for Cunningham that the list of people interviewed on camera reads like a who’s who of the industry.
Right now there’s no UK release date for the documentary – we’re keeping our fingers crossed that it crosses the pond soon – but keep your eyes pinned on www.zeitgeistfilms.com for the latest screening details.
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