Street style photographer Bill Cunningham, 87, is currently in the hospital recovering from a stroke, Page Six reports.
“Bill’s family and senior editors from The Times have been in regular contact with him,” a spokeswoman for Cunningham’s longtime employer, The New York Times, said. “We believe that his recovery will be quick.” His regular feature On the Street, which culls together photographs of New Yorkers walking around wearing all manner of seasonally-appropriate (or inappropriate) garb did not run in the paper on Sunday. Cunningham was in bike accident last summer, but seemed to recover well.
To describe Cunningham as beloved is almost downplaying his importance to many New Yorkers and to the fashion world at large; as chronicled in the renowned documentary Bill Cunningham New York, Cunningham has spent literal decades of his life biking around the city in the same outfit photographing all types of city life with a level of joy and irreverence that many of us can barely muster up for one day. But he has also, as the documentary notes, lived a very solitary life, surrounded by many people who consider him their friend but frankly know limited amounts about his private life.
To say we wish him well in his recovery would be an understatement. As an aside, I’d highly suggest following John Kurdewan, his assistant at the Times, on Instagram, who has given Bill’s often very old-school way of doing things a life on social media.
Image via AP.
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
