Bill Cunningham New York is a magical documentary portrait of the cultural anthropologist who has been photographing ordinary people on the streets of New York for decades, long before the internet and cult of the fashion blogger...
Who? Unlikely man-about-town and street-fashion photographer, 83-year-old Bill Cunningham.
What? Bill Cunningham New York is a magical documentary portrait of the cultural anthropologist who has been photographing ordinary people on the streets of New York for decades, long before the internet and cult of the fashion blogger. Uninterested by society figures or celebrities, Cunningham obsessively roams the streets by bicycle, in his trademark blue workwear smock, seeking out individual flair and emerging fashion trends for his bi-weekly columns – “On The Street” and “Evening Hours” – in the Style section of The New York Times. “He’s like a war photographer – he’ll do anything for a shot,” says Paper Magazine editor-in-chief Kim Hastreiter in the documentary.
“He sees things other people don’t and then in six months time they’ll be a trend,” explains US Vogue Editor Anna Wintour, “We all get dressed for Bill.”
Why? One of the few remaining residents of Carnegie Hall, New York veteran Cunningham has become a legend in his own right, “He sees things other people don’t and then in six months time, they’ll be a trend,” explains US Vogue Editor Anna Wintour, “We all get dressed for Bill.”
An intensely private and modest man, it took director Richard Press and producer Philip Gefter 10 years to make Bill Cunningham New York: eight to convince Bill to be filmed and two to shoot and edit. Shot on handheld consumer cameras and with no crew, so as not to be obtrusive, the documentary intimately follows Cunningham around the city, at The New York Times and in his humble home at Carnegie Hall – where he sleeps amongst filing cabinets of all the negatives he has ever taken. Featuring a cast of uptown fixtures who Cunningham has photographed over the years (including Wintour and Tom Wolfe) as well as key New York figures who have never appeared in a movie but who agreed to because of their regard for him (David Rockefeller, Brooke Astor, Annette De La Renta) this documentary captures the true essence of a man loved at all levels of the social scale and an artist whose sole goal is to live an independent life chronicling the style of the city.
Bill Cunningham New York, a film by Richard Press is out now.
Text by Lucia Davies
