Bill's New York

Next to Paris, although immeasurably far behind, I would love to someday visit New York. The New York that I know used to be that of Eloise, the precocious poor little rich girl who has for her home the grand halls of the Plaza, until I came across Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” and my New York became forever his. Allen’s city is in black and white, like the old Hollywood films I adored, and set against the glorious score of “Rhapsody in Blue.” When the movie was over I decided that when I finally walk New York’s fabled streets, I will have Gershwin playing in my iPod. There is simply no other way to do it.

It is always best to experience a place, I suppose, through the eyes of someone who is over the moon in love with it. Perhaps this is what makes “Manhattan” irresistibly charming, most of all—that it is, more than anything else, a love story between a man and his city. It is more beautifully tragic, I remember thinking, when the character is in love not with another person but a place, which is infinitely greater than him and will only receive and not reciprocate his love. The man can only woo, ceaselessly and faithfully, and expect nothing in return.

Today I watched “Bill Cunningham New York,” which I have been hoping to see for several years now, since I knew of its release. The film documents the life of the fashion photographer who for more than half a century now spends his days on his bicycle taking pictures of the streets of New York and then publishes them in his legendary column in The New York Times. One scene shows his studio, a plain and impossibly small space further dwarfed by too many filing cabinets. Cunningham opens the drawers for the camera, and in them are all the rolls of film that he has used and photographs he has taken throughout the years—every single one.

I was astonished. Here is a man, now in his eighties, who has lived the same way everyday all his life. What constant, faithful love. He wakes up, goes on his bike, and patiently treads the streets of New York, lovingly encapsulating the life of the place. He longs to immortalize New York and its various tempers and singular beauty and carefully tucks it away in his drawers. He often does not accept payments for photography assignments, the documentary proceeds to show, for he works only for New York and the photographs. I wonder if he knows that long after he is gone, New York, which he cared not to slip through his fingers and away from him, will outlive him and go on and breathe on. Perhaps his beloved place need not be immortalized, after all, for it is already immortal. What a sad thought—to all your life love for nothing.

But then perhaps I thought, more than the city, it is himself that his photographs have made eternal. Bill Cunningham will forever be known as the man who was over the moon in love with New York. And when he is gone and they open his filing cabinets they will find not pictures of New York but the New York that was Bill’s. Inside his drawers, he and the place are one. Perhaps a man can marry the place he loves, after all.

My favorite New York movies:

1. Manhattan
2. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
3. New York Stories
4.  Everyone Says I Love You