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 times in his career when he tore up his paycheck