Bill Cunningham

Legendary and singular, photographer Bill Cunningham has been chronicling what people wear in daily life and at high-society soirees, principally in New York City, for nearly 50 years. On his bike, outfitted in his blue workman’s smock and carrying his battered, film-based Nikon camera, he is a familiar figure on the streets of New York. Celebrating creativity and spotting trends, often before anyone else, he maintains two long-running columns in the New York Times: “On the Street,” focused on street fashion, and “Evening Hours,” focused on the gala and benefit scenes. He was recently the subject of a documentary, Bill Cunningham: New York (2010), in which he summed up his approach with characteristic modesty: “I don’t decide anything. I let the street speak to me, and in order for the street to speak to you, you’ve got to stay out there and see what it is.”