Bill Cunningham

“We all get dressed for Bill,” says Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. The Bill in question is New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has chronicled fashion trends he spots emerging from Manhattan’s sidewalks and high society charity soirees, for his popular Style section columns “On the Street” and “Evening Hours.” The range of people he snaps includes uptown fixtures like Wintour, Brooke Astor, Tom Wolfe and Annette de la Renta, as well as downtown eccentrics and everyone in between. Rarely has anyone embodied contradictions as happily and harmoniously as Cunningham, who lived a monklike existence in the same Carnegie Hall studio for 50 years, never eats in restaurants and gets around solely on his bike. Bill Cunningham New York is a delicate, funny and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.