William John Cunningham Jr. (March 13, 1929 – June 25, 2016) was an American fashion photographer for The New York Times, known for his candid and street photography.

"[5] After attending Harvard University on scholarship for two months, he dropped out in 1948 and moved to New York City at the age of 19, where he worked again at Bonwit Teller, this time in the advertising department.

In 1958, a New York Times critic wrote that he had "cornered the face-framing market with some of the most extraordinarily pretty cocktail hats ever imagined".

[8] He also worked for Chez Ninon,[9] a couture salon that made line-for-line duplicates of designs by Chanel, Givenchy, and Dior.

[10][11] His clients in the 1950s included Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn, Rebekah Harkness,[9] and future First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier.

[10] Cunningham contributed significantly to fashion journalism, introducing American audiences to Azzedine Alaïa and Jean Paul Gaultier.

[12] While working at Women's Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune, he began taking candid photographs of fashion on the streets of New York.

"[2] Although then-executive editor A. M. Rosenthal was virulently homophobic and consciously neglected coverage of the LGBT community during this period (precipitating editorial conflicts with the likes of fellow Pulitzer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg), Cunningham helped to subvert this stance by photographing a fundraising event in the Fire Island Pines in 1979 and letting the perceptive reader interpret his photos without verbal clues.

Following Rosenthal's retirement from the role in 1988, Cunningham was able to integrate AIDS benefits, pride parades and Wigstock into his coverage.

[17] Cunningham's most notable columns in the Times, On the Street and Evening Hours,[18] ran in the paper from February 26, 1989[19] until shortly before his death in 2016.

It's mirroring exactly our times.He wrote fashion criticism and published photo essays in Details, beginning with six pages in its first issue in March 1985 and rising to many more.

"[16] He made a career taking unexpected photographs of everyday people, socialites and fashion personalities, many of whom valued his company.

According to David Rockefeller, Brooke Astor asked that Cunningham attend her 100th birthday party, the only member of the media invited.

[40][41] A selection of photos from Cunningham's Facades Project series was shown in 1977 exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

[12][50] As he accepted the award at a Paris ceremony, he photographed the audience and then told them: "It's as true today as it ever was: he who seeks beauty will find it.

"[56] Though he contributed to the New York Times regularly beginning in the 1970s, he did not become an employee until 1994, when he decided he needed to have health insurance coverage after being hit by a truck while biking.

"[57] He cultivated his own fashion signature, dressing in a uniform of black sneakers and a blue moleskin workman's jacket, his only accessory a camera.

The documentary also details his philosophy on fashion, art, and photography, and observes his interactions with his subjects while taking photos.

[citation needed] In 2013, it was acquired by the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection Cunningham was featured on BBC Two's The Culture Show in March 2012.

[63] In the film Cunningham describes his work as a milliner in the 1940s and his first encounters with the Paris fashion world in the 1950s while stationed in France as a US serviceman.

[63] Variety critic Owen Gleiberman wrote that the film demonstrated "a special, intoxicating quality to movies that excavate the fashion demimonde prior to the 1960s.

[1][6][29][51][53] Following his death, the Bergdorf Goodman department store created a display in its building's window memorializing Cunningham.

[23][24][66] Cunningham was a lifelong Catholic and regular worshipper at Manhattan's Church of St Thomas More, where a private Requiem Mass was celebrated by parish priest Father Kevin Madigan.

"[67] Though known for his strong preference for personal privacy (he participated reluctantly as a documentary film subject), Cunningham left an autobiography manuscript, which he titled Fashion Climbing, which his family discovered in his archives after his death in 2016.