Bill Cunningham
Photo courtesy of Lenzartis One of my heroes passed last week. Bill Cunningham first drew my attention when I saw a documentary about him. He was a tiny wisp of a man, always with a blue smock jacket, his bicycle, and his camera as he raced through the streets of midtown Manhattan photographing street fashions for his weekly spread in The New York Times . At night, he hovered and flitted through the summer garden parties of the rich and famous to document the gatherings in a second collection prominent in the paper’s Sunday Style section. At 87, he seemed indestructible, that he would go on for ages and ages even though he appeared delicate and child-like. No one does the kind of work Bill did. He was an artist living an ascetic life. His photography was everything to him. I admired his singular focus, his obsession with his art. Like most true artists, he would continue even if no one paid him. In fact, there were...