Bill Cunningham

William John Cunningham Jr. (March 13, 1929 – June 25, 2016) was an American fashion photographer for The New York Times, known for his candid and street photography.

A Harvard University dropout, he first became known as a designer of women's hats before moving on to writing about fashion for Women's Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune. He began taking candid photographs on the streets of New York City, and his work came to the attention of The New York Times with a 1978 capture of Greta Garbo in an unguarded moment. Cunningham reported for the paper from 1978 to 2016.

Cunningham was hospitalized for a stroke in New York City in June 2016 and died soon after.

Early life and education William John Cunningham Jr. was born into an Irish Catholic family and raised in Boston. He had his first exposure to the fashion world as a stockboy in Bonwit Teller's Boston Store. Not long after, he quit his job and struck out on his own, making hats under the name "William J". He was drafted during the Korean War and was stationed in France, where he had his first exposure to French fashion. After serving a tour in the U.S. Army, he returned to New York in 1953 and his work as a milliner. In 1958, a New York Times critic wrote that he had "cornered the face-framing market with some of the most extraordinarily pretty cocktail hats ever imagined". He also worked for Chez Ninon, a couture salon that made line-for-line duplicates of designs by Chanel, Givenchy, and Dior. His clients in the 1950s included Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn, Rebekah Harkness, While working at Women's Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune, he began taking candid photographs of fashion on the streets of New York. He was a self-taught photographer. He took one such photograph of Greta Garbo, though he later said he had not recognized her while photographing her nutria coat: "I thought: 'Look at the cut of that shoulder. It's so beautiful.' All I had noticed was the coat, and the shoulder." He then published a group of impromptu pictures in the New York Times in December 1978, which soon became the regular series On the Street. His editor at the New York Times, Arthur Gelb, called these photographs "a turning point for the Times, because it was the first time the paper had run pictures of well-known people without getting their permission." Cunningham nevertheless joked about his role at the paper: "I'm just the fluff. I fill around the ads, if we have any."

Cunningham's most notable columns in the Times, On the Street and Evening Hours, ran in the paper from February 26, 1989 until shortly before his death in 2016. For his society fashion column Evening Hours, he attended high society events such as the prestigious International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to select a few debutantes with the most fashionable, beautiful and elegant gowns to appear in his column. For On the Street, Cunningham photographed people and the passing scene in the streets of Manhattan, often at the corner Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, which The New York Times called Cunningham's "main perch". As he worked, his focus was on clothing as personal expression. He did not photograph people in the manner of paparazzi, preferring genuine personal style to celebrity. He once explained why he was not joining a group of photographers who swarmed around Catherine Deneuve: "But she isn't wearing anything interesting." Late in life he explained: "I am not fond of photographing women who borrow dresses. I prefer parties where women spend their own money and wear their own dresses.... When you spend your own money, you make a different choice." He was uninterested in those who showcased clothing they had not chosen themselves, which they modeled on the red carpet at celebrity events. Most of his pictures, he said, were never published. He was part owner of the magazine for a time as well. In an essay in Details in 1989, Cunningham was the first to apply the word "deconstructionism" to fashion. He also contributed two collection-review pieces to the 1991 inaugural year of Visionaire magazine. Designer Oscar de la Renta said: "More than anyone else in the city, he has the whole visual history of the last 40 or 50 years of New York. It's the total scope of fashion in the life of New York." In 1978, he published Facades, a collection of 128 of these photographs.

Exhibitions A selection of photos from Cunningham's Facades Project series was shown in 1977 exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The Facades series received a full exhibition at the New-York Historical Society in 2014. The Society also holds 91 silver gelatin silver prints from the Facades series, donated by Cunningham, in their permanent collection. In 2016, the Savannah College of Art and Design FASH Museum of Fashion + Film presented "Grand Divertissement à Versailles, Vintage Photographs by Bill Cunningham," an exhibition of Cunningham's images of the 1973 Battle of Versailles fashion show. In 2017 the New-York Historical Society held an exhibition of his personal possessions including his bicycle with which he rode around New York City.

Awards and honors In 1983 the Council of Fashion Designers of America named Cunningham the outstanding photographer of the year. In 2008 he was awarded the Officier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. As he accepted the award at a Paris ceremony, he photographed the audience and then told them: "It's as true today as it ever was: he who seeks beauty will find it." In 2012 he received the Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence. The invitations to the award ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria read "Come Dressed for Bill".

Personal philosophy

Cunningham avoiding a photographer while cruising the streets in May 2016.

His personal philosophy was: "You see, if you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do, kid." He sometimes said it another way: "Money is the cheapest thing. Liberty is the most expensive." Though he contributed to the New York Times regularly beginning in the 1970s, he did not become an employee until 1994, when he decided he needed to have health insurance coverage after being hit by a truck while biking.

He cultivated his own fashion signature, dressing in a uniform of black sneakers and a blue moleskin workman's jacket, his only accessory a camera. He traveled Manhattan by bicycle, repeatedly replacing those that were stolen or damaged in accidents. He praised the city's bike-sharing program when it launched in 2013: "There are bikes everywhere and it's perfect for the New Yorkers who have always been totally impatient. What I love, is to see them all on wheels, on their way to work in the morning in their business suits, the women in their office clothes ... It has a very humorous and a very practical effect for New Yorkers ... I mean, it's wonderful." After breaking a kneecap in a biking accident in 2015, he wore a cast and used a cane to photograph a Mostly Mozart Festival gala.

Cunningham described his philosophy regarding fashion in the documentary film Bill Cunningham New York: "The wider world that perceives fashion as sometimes a frivolity that should be done away with in the face of social upheavals and problems that are enormous -- the point is in fact that fashion, ah, you know, in point of fact it's the armor to survive the reality of everyday life. I don't think you could do away with it. It would be like doing away with civilization." In the same movie, during his acceptance speech for the French Legion of Honour in Paris, he said: "He who seeks beauty will find it."

In media In 2010, filmmaker Richard Press and writer Philip Gefter of The New York Times produced Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary about Cunningham. Hilton Als in The New Yorker called the film "a magisterial documentary about urban life and creativity." The film received nominations for Best Documentary from The Directors' Guild of America; the Producers Guild of America; and the Independent Spirit Awards. In 2013, it was acquired by the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection

Cunningham was featured on BBC Two's The Culture Show in March 2012.

In 2018, director Mark Bozek showed his documentary The Times of Bill Cunningham in the Spotlight on Documentary slot of the New York Film Festival. The inception of the film was an interview which Bozek filmed with Cunningham in 1994. Initially intended to be 10 minutes, the interview stretched on "until the tape ran out". In the film Cunningham describes his work as a milliner in the 1940s and his first encounters with the Paris fashion world in the 1950s while stationed in France as a US serviceman. The Times of Bill Cunningham has received favorable reviews on the critical website Metacritic.

Death and legacy Cunningham died age 87 in New York City on June 25, 2016, after being hospitalized for a stroke. His death was widely reported in both the fashion and the general press. Cunningham was a lifelong Catholic and regular worshipper at Manhattan's Church of St Thomas More, where a private Requiem Mass was celebrated by parish priest Father Kevin Madigan. Madigan recalled that "hose closest to him would attest that he was a spiritual person. From Sunday to Sunday Bill could be found in one of the rear pews, as unobtrusive here as he would be at some gala at the Met or the Pierre or at a fashion runway."

Though known for his strong preference for personal privacy (he participated reluctantly as a documentary film subject), Cunningham left an autobiography manuscript, which he titled Fashion Climbing, which his family discovered in his archives after his death in 2016. Critic Hilton Als contributed the preface.

In July 2025 it was announced that the New-York Historical Society had acquired his archive of photographs, negatives, and memorabilia.