Next week sees the release of a new documentary film dedicated to the legendary New York Times fashion photographer, Bill Cunningham. Now aged 81 the spritely Cunningham has been documenting the street style of New York for the last 50 years concentrating on the quirky and interesting rather than the rich and famous.
Someone catches the eye and the lens of Bill Cunningham on the streets of New York
“The best fashion show is definitely on the street,” he says in the film. “Always has been. Always will be – I am not interested in celebrities with their free dresses. I am interested in clothes.”
With a battered Nikon 35mm camera, he goes everywhere on his bicycle, constantly on the hunt for someone to catch his excellent eye. It is considered an honour to be photographed by him and a snub not to be.
“I have said many times that we all get dressed for Bill,” says US Vogue Editor, Anna Wintour. “He’s been documenting me ever since I was a kid. And it’s one snap, two snaps or he ignores you, which is death.”
Fashion powerbroker & US Vogue Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour being photographed by Bill Cunningham
His big break came in the late seventies when he photographed, what he considered to be a most amazing fur coat on a most mysterious woman.
“I thought: ‘Look at the cut of that shoulder. It’s so beautiful,’” he said. “And it was a plain coat, too. You’d look at it and think: ‘Oh, are you crazy? It’s nothing.’ ” It was only after a crowd gathered did he realise it was Greta Garbo.
The most outlandish and creative outfits will always catch the eye of Cunningham.
“The main thing I love about street photography is that you find the answers you don’t see at the fashion shows… If you just cover the designers in the shows, that’s only one facet.”
Veteran street photographer Bill Cunningham takes a different view of fashion girls outside a catwalk show venue
Of course the rich and famous of the Big Apple know him and long to be the subject of his lens. However, unlike most fashion photographers, Cunningham does not seek any live a life of glamour. He sleeps on a camp bed in his one room studio surrounded by filing cabinets. The bathroom is down the hall and shared with other tenants in the block and he never eats out. He owns four outfits at most – his workaday uniform is a blue French artisans’ smock (with lots of pockets) which he buys from a DIY store in Paris.
Bill Cunningham editing film at his desk at the New York TImes
The documentary not only reveals the fantastic body of work Cunningham has produced but is also an insight into a well-loved inconspicuously charming man whose only interest in life is to be interested by others.
General UK release is from March 16th with a preview at Glasgow Film Festival on the 22nd of February . See http://dogwoof.com/films/bill-cunningham-new-york for releases near you in the UK.
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