American photographer fascinated by the street culture and fashion of New YorkBill Cunningham photographed genuine people wearing genuine clothes on the streets of New York for 50 years. It was his obsession,addiction, way of life, and – though he disparaged it as a “deeply minor thing” – his art form; one that he practised daily until he suffered the stroke that led to his death,at the age of 87.
He found that true metier in London in 1966, where he was tentatively writing fashion copy for the Chicago Tribune, and met the photographer David Montgomery,who gave him a cheap Olympus Pen-D half-frame camera to utilize as a notebook. In Cunningham’s hands, it became far more than that. The street speaks to me, or ” he said; it was “the lost ingredient” in fashion journalism,his street very often being Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, where he began recording the personal style of passers-by, or making visual connections between designers and wearers,environment and tribes, fashion and history.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com