A spy in the hothouse of fashion: Bill Cunningham (1929-2016)

IT MAY BE the height of irony that a man who never went to the movies or owned a television set could be a profound, outsize presence on the worlds of style, fashion and popular culture. Such was the photographic professional, the ascetic creative, the joyful iconoclast the world knew as BILL CUNNINGHAM.

Cunningham, who died on Saturday at the age of 87, was a legend at The New York Times, where for 40 years he chronicled the evolution of fashion and style in the petri dish of the streets of the city that never sleeps. And much of the “streetwise” personae that fashion has taken on over the years is a direct result of Cunningham’s genial-guerrilla approach to photojournalism. It was his invention.

He had the lifestyle of a monk, the instincts of a sniper and the eye of an artist. And he was a colleague and a friend of mine. ...

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Image credit: Cunningham: Carlo Allergie/Reuters