The New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham spent decades on the streets of Manhattan and Paris, in the uniform of a French blue workman’s jacket, and often on a bicycle, in search of style. He sought out the beauty in the creatively put together human being. For as much as Cunningham loved fashion what he sought for his camera was the unique stamp of the artistic individual. In Bill Cunningham On the Street: Five Decades of Iconic Photography, readers will find a thimble’s worth of the photographs that made this man both beloved and famous. The essays that accompany the photos reinforce the intense love that the man called Bill felt for his work, and about living a life that he was called to. A great companion read is Fashion Climbing: A Memoir with Photographs. This manuscript was found by his family after Cunningham’s death in 2016.
Maureen Millea Smith is a librarian at the Edina Library and a Minnesota Book Award-winning novelist.
