Bill Cunningham, legendary New York Times fashion photographer, dies at 87

Bill Cunningham

Bill Cunningham, the street-style photographer whose photo essays for The New York Times memorialized trends ranging from fanny packs to Birkin bags, gingham shirts and fluorescent biker shorts, died in New York on Saturday. He was 87. Writing in the New York Times, Jacob Bernstein notes that Cunningham had been hospitalized recently after having a stroke.

"In his nearly 40 years working for The Times,  Cunningham operated both as a dedicated chronicler of fashion and as an unlikely cultural anthropologist, one who used the changing dress habits of the people he photographed to chart the broader shift away from formality and toward something more diffuse and individualistic," Bernstein writes.

Link to New York Times obit and slide show