Bill Cunningham: American photographer fascinated by New York street culture

Bill Cunningham photographed real people wearing real clothes on the streets of New York for 50 years. It was his obsession, addiction, way of life, and – though he disparaged it as a “deeply minor thing” – his art form; one that he practised daily until he suffered the stroke that led to his death, at the age of 87.

He found that true metier in London in 1966, where he was tentatively writing fashion copy for the Chicago Tribune, and met the photographer David Montgomery, who gave him a cheap Olympus Pen-D half-frame camera to use as a notebook. In Cunningham's hands, it became far more than that. "The street speaks to me," he said; it was "the missing ingredient" in fashion journalism, his street very often being Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, where he began to record the personal style of passers-by.

He thought celebrity, cost, luxury and labels were all phooey. Cunningham only registered garments and how well they were worn, like the beautifully cut shoulder of a plain nutria-fur coat on a striking old lady one winter day in 1978: it took a while to dawn on him that she was Greta Garbo.

That earned him his first half-page, which evolved into the regular spread On the Street, with its themed collages composed of individual stunners, and the Evening Hours slot for charity-scene social events. For the first 25 years, Cunningham's work was a media peculiarity, a reminder that the New York Times was also a local paper. After that, everybody had a camera, and the internet on which to publish, but Cunningham was revered as the first master of street style.

Box camera

Born in Boston, the son of a government employee, William Cunningham, and his shy wife, as a boy he had a simple box camera to snap people in the streets, at parties and on vacation. His other hobby was confecting hats; his education was watching people outside Bonwit Teller, the department store where he shifted stock.

After a miserable term at Harvard University, he set out in 1948 for New York, to work in the ad department of Bonwit Teller’s flagship store.

He had no interest in wealth and stayed resolutely freelance until a truck hit his bike in 1994, after which he took a Times staff job for the health insurance. Offered his share from the sale of the magazine Details, which he had helped to launch in 1982, he waved the big cheque away. "Money's the cheapest thing," he said. "Liberty is the most expensive. . ."

He warily accepted fashion industry awards and membership of the French Légion d’honneur, and quite liked being designated a living landmark of NYC by its Landmarks Conservancy in 2009.