Seeking Beauty
Bill Cunningham at the Frick's Young Fellows Ball in
April 12th 2013, in the East Gallery
The exhibition is:
Renoir: Impressionism, Fashion, and Full-Length Painting
which ran from February 7, 2012 to May 13, 2012
The painting, on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, is:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
Dance in the City, 1883
Oil on canvas
70 7/8 x 35 1⁄2 inches
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
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Re-written from the Camera Lucida posts:
Bill Cunninghham New York
He Who Seeks Beauty Will Find It
Bill Cunningham New York is a documentary about a gentle man, who is the New York Times fashion photographer. Cunningham started off as a milliner (as a child, he used to inspect the hats of women sitting in front of him in church), and eventually got into fashion photography. His early post was with Women's Wear Daily, where he took photographs of ordinary women wearing designer clothes in the streets. But, after the lady's journal mocked these ordinary women by juxtaposing them with wealthy socialites wearing those same clothes, he quit. Women continually bring up his kindness, saying that he is one of the kindest fashion photographers they know, and won't ridicule them with his pictures. He continues to take photographs of fashion on ordinary women in the streets, and on socialites at various functions. He his two regular columns in the New York Times Styles section Sunday edition: "On the Street" and "Evening Hours." He also has a slide show section of "On the Street" in the New York Times online issue.
Cunningham appears delicate and humble, but his photographic method is feline, and almost predatory. There are moments when he waits, with humped shoulders, looking like a wild cat about to pounce on his prey. He has a strange method where, still humped over, he brings his camera high above his head and takes shots of whatever is below. I think experience has shown him there is always something (or someone) interesting in the view beyond his sight.
New York City is his fashion depository, and he travels throughout the city on a bicycle. He is somehow able to take out his camera and shoot the passing scene of New York's street style as he rides his bike. He has never been in an accident, at least as far as I could learn from the film, but he has had his bike stolen twenty eight times.
The sound track to the film is by jazz musician John Lurie, whose raw music fits with Cunningham's cut throat maneuvers through New York City traffic, exposed (and raw) on his bicycle.
He wears a blue jacket, which has become his uniform of sorts. He found it in Paris, where it is the uniform for garbage collectors. He likes its utilitarian sturdiness, but one of his fashion icons says that it has its own style. He purchases a whole batch on his trips to Paris. Through rough weather, he wears a plastic poncho which covers him and his camera, and which he regularly patches and repairs with duct tape.
He started out at Details magazine, where the editor would give him a hundred pages (limitless, to any photographer) to fill per issue. This freedom of creation has passed on to his New York Times assignment, where, although his newspaper space is limited, he nonetheless has the whole of New York City with which to fill his blank pages.
He even educates his photo editor, a matter-of-fact type of guy who just want to get the job don. In one scene, this editor cut off the hands of a photograph of a New York socialite Mercedes Bass. Cunningham comes to the rescue, saying that the woman looks like the portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent, and cutting off the hands would destroy any resemblance.
His fame now allows him access to the most prestigious in the fashion world - people will stop and pose in their latest regalia for him to photograph, and fashion editors will sing his praises. But, I think it is his unassuming personality that convinces people. They don't fear malice or mockery from him, and talk of the kindness in his photographs. Through his humbleness, he also convinces everyone he meets, from the street to the gala dinners, that they are worth photographing.
He has lived for decades in a rent-stabilized artist's studio in Carnegie Hall. During the film, he was in the process of getting evicted - Carnegie Hall wanted the spaces for educational facilities. He has since moved into more spacious quarters.
He has an infectious cheerfulness about him. Perhaps that is why everyone, from people in the street who know nothing about him, to the high society in their designer outfits, allow him to take their photographs.
There was a serious, emotional moment in the documentary when he said that he goes to mass every Sunday (I think he said at St. Patrick's). He started to well-up, and it took him a while to collect himself. He gave no explanation for his emotions. I think that now in his early eighties, he must be thinking about his mortality, and his place in the afterlife. The interviewer, to his credit, left him alone.
He was drafted into the Korean War. He said it came naturally for him to wish to fight for his country. Throughout his life, his family has thought that he was a homosexual. This genuinely perplexes him, although he says he understands that a fashion photographer is not a very manly profession, in their eyes at least. But to the contrary, it needs the hardy, steely determination that he has, which allows him to do death-defying maneuvers such as cycling through New York City traffic. His determination is apparent everywhere. He even fights, in his own affable way, with his photo editor, who finally gives in to his unwavering persistence.
There were many gently funny moments in the film, but the funniest was his story of how he photographed the 1960s hippies and their clothes in Central Park, all in black and white. Their psychedelics were lost in his two-toned photographs. He recounts this with his signature laugh, but that is how he told all his stories.
He calls describes fashion as "the ahmor to survive the reality of everyday life," in his Bostonian accent. "I don't think you could do away with it," he continues. "It would be like doing away with civilization."
But it was a phrase which he used during his acceptance speech for his Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France that best describes his commitment to fashion photography: "He who seeks beauty will find it." It is a wonder how this eighty three-year-old battles through life camera in hand. Because he knows he has to fight to find that beauty.
But his optimism may not be enough. Our society is facing the degradation of beauty, aided by those very bastions of beauty that Cunningham admires: The fashion magazines, the designers, and the elite who showcase their items. Perhaps in the years to come, Cunningham will leave these mainstream institutions of beauty, and try to build other, less conspicuous islands of beauty, where unadulterated beauty can once again regain its rightful place in society.
I tried to find out if "He who seeks beauty will find it" is part of a depository of famous quotes. But no, it is simply a Bill Cunningham quote, soon to be famous. Perhaps he said it with "He who seeks finds" in mind, from Matthew 7:8. Not everything he photographs is beautiful, but one can see his intent is to capture the beautiful, however clumsily it is presented to him. Our century is the least beautiful of the centuries. But, we are lucky that we have a Bill Cunningham, who through his ferociously persistent personality, will never tire to search for, and capture, that illusive beauty.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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