Long before "street-fashion photographer" was even a job description -- before the Sartorialist first spotted a pocket square folded just so, before Tommy Ton even knew what a platform shoe was -- there was Bill Cunningham's regular New York Times photo-column, "On the Street," a weekly feature capturing the range of looks and combinations found on the sidewalks of New York. Cunningham's eye might be attracted by the recurrence of the color red, for example, or a dozen women wearing some variation of a black suede ankle boot. If Cunningham's weekly photo-essays are catnip for people who care about fashion, they're indispensable for people who don't: The French, wisely, believe it's important to have at least a glancing interest in fashion to be culturally literate, and on that score, "On the Street" neatly fulfills the minimum weekly requirement and then some.
But until recently, few outside the fashion world had any idea who Bill Cunningham was, what he looked like, or what his philosophy of fashion (or of photography, for that matter) might be. Richard Press' glorious documentary Bill Cunningham New York pulls the curtain back -- at least as far as it will ever go. Press has been working on the picture for 10 years; he spent 8 of those getting the eighty-something photographer, who covers the city by Schwinn bicycle, to agree to the project. Cunningham is an impish subject, half compliant and half reticent. But what Press comes up with in the end isn't just a portrait of individual eccentricity. Its larger subject is the way one man, just by being alive to what's around him, has created a vast, detailed anthropological record of how New Yorkers present, and feel about, themselves.
Almost no one, not even his closest friends, seem to know much about where Cunningham came from. The Bill Cunningham of today, as Press' camera captures him, is a sprightly gent whose years in New York haven't diminished his upper-crusty-sounding New England accent. One of the movie's interviewees, Cunningham's longtime friend Annie Flanders -- the founding editor of Details magazine, which regularly featured Cunningham's photos in its early years -- suggests that Cunningham may have come from a society family, though she doesn't know for sure. If you know anything about old Yankee families, Cunningham's own style of dressing confirms that: By day, he favors rumpled pants, comfy-looking shoes and a plain blue cotton jacket, which he first saw on Parisian street sweepers and began purchasing in multiples. By night -- Cunningham also shoots society events for the Times -- he wears a plain black suit and a dark coat, but before mounting his bike, he dons a construction worker-style reflective safety vest. In the rain, Cunningham takes cover under a plastic poncho. In one of the movie's early moments, Press captures him spreading it across a file cabinet in the Times offices, the better to mend it with plastic tape. "Why buy a new one?" he asks rhetorically. "They're going to tear anyway. It's wasteful."
Cunningham may not think much about what he wears, but he finds a great deal of pleasure in noticing what others do. He was a successful milliner in the '50s, whose clients included the likes of Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe, although those particular two didn't interest him much. "They didn't have style," he says, with a casual dismissiveness that somehow doesn't come off as unkind.
What does interest him is hard to define; the trick is that he knows it when he sees it. Press includes interviews with a number of high-profile fashion types whom Cunningham has photographed regularly over the years, like Vogue editor Anna Wintour ("I've said many times that we all get dressed for Bill") and Annette de la Renta, wife of Oscar, who notes that Cunningham is most delighted when he catches her in old, worn-in clothes (in which, it's important to add, she still looks fabulous). Other favorite subjects include former United Nations diplomat Shail Upadhya, from Nepal, who appears in Bill Cunningham New York in a series of riotously colored suits of his own design, some of them made from curtains and sofa upholstery fabric. (His deadpan descriptions of these extraordinary ensembles is by itself worth the price of admission.)
Even so, Cunningham is less interested in who's-wearing-what than in how it's being worn. His photo features always mix stylish, creative civilians in with the hardcore fashion types. Press' approach to teasing Cunningham's story out of him is a sly and indirect one. Mostly, he just follows the photographer around, looking to see what he sees. It's fascinating to watch Cunningham pass up one leggy girl in high heels, only to suddenly chase after another -- and once you look more closely, you, too, notice the detail of a specific outfit that has caught his eye. It could be the particular curve of a skirt hem, or the way a puffy collar frames a face like a satiny cocoon.
At one point Press may work just a little too hard to extract personal details from Cunningham; he's a practical, affable sort, and not particularly comfortable talking about his romantic life. But Press backs off just in time, perhaps recognizing that in the world we live in, it's a relief to find someone who keeps some secrets for himself. And part of what Press is doing here is capturing a world we're close to losing: Until recently, Cunningham lived in a small studio in Carnegie Hall, one of numerous rent-controlled residences in the building long occupied by artists. (Cunningham's tiny space, as Press shows it to us, is packed with file cabinets containing negatives of every photograph he's ever taken; the only other furniture is a simple bed.) In 2008, Carnegie Corp. began pushing residents out of these studios. The space that used to be Agnes DeMille's dance studio, where she choreographed Oklahoma, is now a bland-looking office populated by telemarketers. Cunningham -- along with his friend, photographer Editta Sherman, who has lived in the building since the 1940s -- was one of the last holdouts, though as the documentary tells us, he finally relented and was relocated to a new apartment last year.
The Carnegie Hall studio saga is key to the significance of Bill Cunningham New York. It would be possible, I guess, to dismiss Press' documentary as a quirky movie about an eccentric fashion guy. But at one point, Cunningham tells the story of how he got his first camera: It was given to him by a photographer friend, who told him, "Use it like a pen." (He repeatedly reminds us in the documentary that he's not a "real" photographer.) We also see him receiving a medal in France, as he's made an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters: Shy as he is, he accepts the ribbon gratefully -- almost, but not quite, breaking into tears -- and says a few sentences in French before switching to English: "He who seeks beauty will find it."
Cunningham has spent some 60 years out on the street, listening, he says, for what it has to say to him. Press' movie shows Cunningham leading by example, urging us not just to look, but to really see. To watch Bill Cunningham New York is to see a portion of late 20th- and early 21st-century history pass before our eyes, on teetering heels or two-tone oxfords. It's everything we stand to lose, captured forever. Blink and you'll miss it.