Bill Cunningham was not a street or a fashion photographer, as was not paparazzi, but - paradoxically, combined the best qualities of all the above genres. Its unique optics and amazing fashion dedication, multiplied by the philosophy of acent estate, became unique, and the biography of Cunningham can surprise no less than his photo.
The first passion for fashion Bill felt strangely, in the church, in the early 1940s. "I could never focus on Sunday church services, because I was already focused on women's hats," recalled Cunning. Moldoval, Bill will open his own studio on making hats, while the most close to the "Fashion industry" was the work by the courier at the tailor. Following, he settled the storekeeper to the department store, where he quickly learned to distinguish beautiful and high-quality things from averaged-everyday.
At the nineteenthy aged, having led to study at Harvard University, Cunningham moved to New York, where he dreamed of opening a small studio-shop on sewing hats. Three hundred dollars saved from scholarships and seemed huge billa, gave him a courage - he was going to rent a room in the very center of New York. From the Carnegie store, where Kunningham went with a proposal to handle him, the young businessman was sent to the address ... Psychiatric Office.
In the end, tangling my appetites, Bill found a small room hardly did not in the attic, and for her rent began to pay cleaning throughout the house, in parallel, working on the street tissue, then the pedestront. Business did not even pinched the funds spent on the materials, but was happy with Cunningham. He seems to be able to lose heart at all. Even when Cunningham was mobilized into the army, good luck did not leave him - Bill served in Paris, where he could freely attend fashion shows of the best houses.
Upon returning canningham in the United States, his hat finally came to a qualitatively new level, he was invited to cooperate a high fashion salon, which made the design of Chanel, Givenchy and Dior designs. In the 1950s, visitors of this salon were, for example, Marilyn Monroe, Catherine Hepburn and Jacqueline Kennedy. Jacqueline after the murder of a president's husband sent his red costume to the canning to repaint him in a mourning black color for the funeral.
Experience with star and bohemian clients pushed Bill to journalism - he began to photograph fashionably dressed people on New York streets and post photos in Women's Wear Daily and Chicago Tribune magazines. Actually, when the hats come out of fashion and the business of Cunningham will become unprofitable, the photo and column will become his life. To death to the eighty-eighth year of life, he will go to the corner of the fifth Avenue and drove around the neighboring bike, holding the camera at the ready.
The result of his work was not a street photo, although it was done literally on the street without any preparation. It was not a fashion photo, although the most of the canningham was interested in fashion in all its manifestations. This was not the work of Pararatsi, because the photographer did not put the goal of the invasion of his personal life - he was interested only in the outfits and because Cunningham was not perceived by the stars with a negative or aggression.
Sometimes in the canningham lens turned out to be ordinary people, random passers-by, the outfits of which appeared to the photographer unusual, extravagant, sophisticated or elegant. But the individual achievement of Cunningham is considered how he began to shoot the stars in everyday life. Sometimes, he did not even notice that he removes the star - Great actress Greto Garbo on one of his photographs Cunningham found out only in the back number, with the help of readers. "I thought, look at the cut of this shoulder! It's so beautiful. All I noticed is a coat and shoulder. " In the future, a variety of stars came to the Cunningham lens: David Bowie, George fight, Naomi Camembell, Elizabeth Taylor, Lisa Minhelli and many others.
But who sometimes could not hold back anger, so this is the owners of fashionable homes and fashion designers. The fact is that Cunningham was not only a tagged photographer, but also an urgent journalist. He was unlikely and did not recognize the authorities of the right to error. Could in the Pooh cleaned a new showing of conditional chanel and praise an independent firm for sewing casual wear. To achieve such independence allowed the fact that all his life and everywhere canning was listed by a freelance journalist. If we were talking about the invitation to a kind of event, he was not entrited there to treats. "I just try to lead an honest game, and in New York it is very ... almost impossible. Honestly, in New York, it is similar to the struggle Don Quixote with windmills, "said Cunningham on the slope of the years.
It is best illustrating such simplicity that one of the main fashionable US browsers preferred to go to work in ordinary black sneakers, a blue jacket, and with the only "accessory" in the form of a camera. Before the death of Bill Cunningham lived in a small apartment in Carnegie Hall with amenities on the floor. After him, a collection remained about three million pictures, most of which was never published. The grateful New Yorkrs in memory of the outstanding photographer asked the authorities of the city to call the angle of Fifth Avenue, where so often "hunted" for the frames of Bill Cannigem, his name.
