我们都为比尔着盛装

在纪录片的最后10分钟，导演问了Bill两个问题：

1 你这一生有爱过谁吗？

2 听说你每周日会去做礼拜，原因是？

关于第一个问题，Bill回答说，他没有爱过谁，他也不是gay，他只是天生喜欢衣服。但他犹豫很久，却始终说不出来谁算得上是他的朋友。导演提出了几个人名，他才恍然大悟似地想起他们。（那个瞬间，我感觉他是世界上最孤独的人）

面对第2个问题，罕见地、他哭了，“也许我需要一个信仰”。那可能是他在整个纪录片里唯一流露过的真情片刻。

致敬Bill，这是我看过最好的人物纪录片。

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下文是Bill的生平介绍，来源于纪录片官网地址，参考工具有道翻译，来自一个非英语专业的超业余读者小铁，仅此纪念这位忠于自由与美的记录者Bill Cunningham。

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ABOUT BILL

关于比尔

William John "Bill" 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.A Harvard University dropout, he first became known as a designer of women's hats before moving on to writing about fashion for Women's Wear Dailyand the Chicago Tribune. He began taking candid photographs on the the streets of New York City, and his work came to the attention of The New York Timeswith a 1978 capture of Greta Garbo in an unguarded moment.

威廉·约翰·“比尔”·坎宁安（1929.03.13-2016.06.25）是美国《纽约时报》的一名时尚摄影师，因他的偷拍与街头摄影而闻名。从哈佛大学辍学后，他以女帽设计师的身份第一次为人所知，之后他开始为《女装日报》和《芝加哥论坛》撰写时尚方面的文章，并在纽约的街头开始进行偷拍。1978年，他的作品引起了《纽约时报》的注意，因为他在不经意间抓拍到了一张葛丽泰·嘉宝毫无防备的照片。

Early life and education

早期生活与教育

William John Cunningham Jr. was born into an Irish Catholic family and raised in Boston. He never lost his Boston accent. He had two sisters and an older brother. His parents were religious and used corporal punishment. He had his first exposure to the fashion world as a stockboy in Bonwit Teller's Boston Store. He later said his interest in fashion began in church: "I could never concentrate on Sunday church services because I'd be concentrating on women's hats." 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. Not long after, he quit his job and struck out on his own, making hats under the name "William J". He was drafted during the Korean War and was stationed in France, where he had his first exposure to French fashion. After serving a tour in the U.S. Army, he returned to New York in 1953 and his work as a milliner. 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." He also worked for Chez Ninon, a couture salon that sold copies of designs by Chanel, Givenchy, and Dior. His clients in the 1950s included Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn, and future First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier. Encouraged by his clients, he started writing, first for Women's Wear Daily and then for the Chicago Tribune. He closed his hat shop in 1962. Following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy sent Cunningham a red Balenciaga suit she had bought at Chez Ninon. He dyed it black and she wore it to the funeral.

威廉·约翰·坎宁安出生于一个爱尔兰的天主教家庭，在波士顿长大。他从未失去过他的波士顿口音。在他的上面还有两个姐姐和一个哥哥，而他的父母信教并使用体罚。他第一次接触到时尚界是他在Bonwit Teller公司的波士顿店当店员的时候。后来他说，他对时尚的兴趣始于教堂：“我无法专注于做礼拜，因为我总是更关注女人的帽子。”1948年，凭借奖学金进入哈佛大学的威廉·约翰·坎宁安在两个月后辍学，那年他19岁。他搬去了纽约，再次加入Bonwit Teller公司，这次是在广告部。不久，他辞掉了工作开始自己创业，以“William J”的名字开始制作帽子。他在朝鲜战争时期应征入伍并驻守在法国，那是他第一次接触到法国时尚。在美国陆军服役后，他于1953年回到纽约，开始了自己的女帽生意。1958年，《纽约时报》的一位评论家写道，“他用一些极其漂亮的鸡尾酒帽垄断了面部轮廓市场。”（大概这个意思？）他还曾在Chez Ninon工作，这是一家出售香奈儿、纪梵希和迪奥服装的时装沙龙。二十世纪五十年代，他的客户包括玛丽莲·梦露，凯瑟琳·赫本和未来的第一夫人杰奎琳·布维尔，在她们的鼓励下，他开始写作，相继为《女装日报》和《芝加哥论坛》撰稿。1962年，他关掉了他的帽子店。1963年，肯尼迪总统遇刺，杰奎琳·布维尔将一套她在Chez Ninon买来的红色巴黎世家套装寄给他，他将它染成黑色后，她穿着它参加了葬礼。

Career

职业生涯

Cunningham contributed significantly to fashion journalism, introducing American audiences to Azzedine Alaïa and Jean Paul Gaultier. While working at Women's Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune, he began taking candid photographs of fashion on the streets of New York. He was a self-taught photographer. He took one such photograph of Greta Garbo, though he later said he had not recognized her while photographing her nutria coat: "I thought: 'Look at the cut of that shoulder. It's so beautiful.' All I had noticed was the coat, and the shoulder." He then published a group of impromptu pictures in the New York Times in December 1978, which soon became the regular series On the Street. His editor at the New York Times, Arthur Gelb, called these photographs "a turning point for the Times, because it was the first time the paper had run pictures of well-known people without getting their permission." He nevertheless joked about his role at the paper: "I'm just the fluff. I fill around the ads, if we have any." He pioneered the paper's coverage of the gay community, photographing a fundraising event in the Fire Island Pines in 1979 letting the perceptive reader interpret his photos without verbal clues. By the 1990s, he integrated AIDS benefits, pride parades, and Wigstock into his coverage.

坎宁安为时尚新闻作出了重要贡献，他将阿瑟丁·阿拉亚和让·保罗·高缇耶介绍给了美国观众。当他为《女装日报》和《芝加哥论坛》工作时，他开始偷拍纽约街头的时尚照片。他是一个自学成才的摄影师，有一次他给葛丽泰·嘉宝拍了一张照片，不过后来他说，当他在拍那件海狸鼠大衣时他并没有认出它的主人是葛丽泰·嘉宝。“我在想：看看这肩膀的线条，它是如此美丽。我当时全神贯注地盯着那件衣服和肩膀看。”1978年，他在《纽约时报》上面发表了一组即兴照片，很快它便成为了固定的专栏“On the Street”。他在《纽约时报》的编辑阿瑟·盖尔布称这些照片是“《纽约时报》的一个转折点，因为那是我们第一次未经允许刊登了名人的照片。”不过，他还是拿自己在报社的角色开玩笑:“我只是个无足轻重的人。如果我们有广告的话，我会把广告填满报纸。”他是《纽约时报》报道同性恋群体的先驱，1979年，他在火岛松树林拍摄了一场筹款活动，让敏锐的读者在没有文字线索的情况下解读他的照片。到了二十世纪九十年代，他将艾滋病权益、骄傲游行和假发嘉年华纳入了他的报道范围。

Cunningham photographed people and the passing scene in the streets of Manhattan, often at the corner Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. As he worked, his focus was on clothing as personal expression. He did not photograph people in the manner of paparazzi, preferring genuine personal style to celebrity. He once explained why he was not joining a group of photographers who swarmed around Catherine Deneuve: "But she isn't wearing anything interesting." Late in life he explained: "I am not fond of photographing women who borrow dresses. I prefer parties where women spend their own money and wear their own dresses.... When you spend your own money, you make a different choice." Instead, wrote Hilton Als in The New Yorker, "He loved 'the kids,' he said, who wore their souls on sleeves he had never seen before, or in quite that way." He was uninterested in those who showcased clothing they had not chosen themselves, which they modeled on the red carpet at celebrity events. Most of his pictures, he said, were never published. His fashion philosophy was populist and democratic:

坎宁安经常在第五大道和第57街的拐角处拍摄曼哈顿街道上的行人和过往的场景。当他工作时，他的重点是服装作为个人的表达。他不以狗仔队的方式拍照，更喜欢真实的个人风格而非名人。有一次，他解释了自己为什么没有加入那群总是围着凯瑟琳·德纳芙转的摄影师团体：“她的穿着毫无个性。”后来他解释道，“我不喜欢那些借衣服穿的女人。我更喜欢花自己的钱的女性和她们的打扮…当你花自己的钱时，你会有不同的选择。”希尔顿·艾尔斯在《纽约客》上写道，“坎宁安喜欢孩子们，他说，这些孩子将自己的灵魂穿在袖子上，这是他以前从未见过的方式。”他对那些模仿名人在红毯上穿着的人不感兴趣，因为他们对穿着没有主见。他拍摄的大多数照片从未公开发表过，他的时尚哲学是平民和民主：

Fashion is as vital and as interesting today as ever. I know what people with a more formal attitude mean when they say they're horrified by what they see on the street. But fashion is doing its job. It's mirroring exactly our times.

无论是过去还是现在，时尚都是如此重要和有趣。我知道，当人们在街上被他们看到的东西吓了一跳的时候，他们开始用更正式的态度去面对它们了。时尚正在为此做出努力，它像镜子一样照映着我们这个时代。

He wrote fashion criticism and published photo essays in Details, beginning with six pages in its first issue in March 1985 and sometimes filling forty pages. He was part owner of the magazine for a time as well. His work there included an illustrated essay that showed similarities between the work of Isaac Mizrahi and earlier Geoffrey Beene designs, which Mizrahi called "unbelievably unfair and arbitrary". In any essay in Details in 1989, he was the first to apply the word "deconstructionism" to fashion.

他在《细节》杂志发表过时尚评论和图片文章，那家杂志在1985年3月刚发表的时候只有6页，有时又有40页，有段时间他也是杂志的所有者之一。他在那里的作品包括一篇配图文章，展示了艾萨克·米兹拉希和杰弗里·比尼的早期作品之间的相似之处，米兹拉希称之为“令人难以置信的不公平和武断”。在1989年的《细节》杂志中，他是第一个将“解构主义”一词应用于时尚的人。

His personal philosophy was: "You see, if you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do, kid."He sometimes said it another way: "Money is the cheapest thing. Liberty is the most expensive." He declined all gifts from those he photographed, even offers of food and drink at gala parties. He said: "I just try to play a straight game, and in New York that's very... almost impossible. To be honest and straight in New York, that's like Don Quixote fighting windmills." 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. Most of his pictures were never sold or published. He said: "I'm really doing this for myself. I'm stealing people's shadows, so I don't feel as guilty when I don't sell them."

坎宁安的人生哲学是：“你看，如果你不接受金钱，他们就不能指使你去做任何事。”有时他会换一种说法，“金钱是最廉价的东西。自由是最昂贵的。”他拒绝了所有来自他拍摄对象送来的礼物，包括拒绝在宴会上提供的食物和酒水。他说：“我只是试着诚实地打直球，但在纽约这非常…几乎不可能。诚实和正直在纽约，就像堂吉诃德在和不存在的敌人在战斗。”尽管他在二十世纪七十年代起就在为《纽约时报》定期撰稿，但直到1994年，他骑自行车时被一辆卡车撞了，他决定需要购买一份健康保险，他才正式成为它的一名员工。他拍摄的大部分照片从未出售或出版，他说：“我这么做是为了我自己。我在偷别人的影子，所以当我不售卖它们的时候我不会感到愧疚。”

Designer Oscar de la Renta said: "More than anyone else in the city, he has the whole visual history of the last 40 or 50 years of New York. It's the total scope of fashion in the life of New York."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.

设计师奥斯卡·德拉伦塔曾说：“坎宁安比纽约的任何一个人都要了解这座城市近四五十年的视觉史，它包含了纽约整个在生活中的时尚。”他将拍摄出人意料的照片作为自己的职业，拍摄对象包括普通人、社会名流和时尚人士，其中很多人都很珍惜他的这份事业。据大卫·洛克菲说，布鲁克·阿斯特邀请坎宁安参加她的100岁生日派对，他是唯一被邀请的媒体人士。

He cultivated his own fashion signature, dressing in his personal uniform that included black sneakers and a blue work man's jacket. His only accessory was a camera. He travelled Manhattan by bicycle, repeatedly replacing those that were stolen or damaged in accidents. He praised the city's bike sharing program when it launched in 2013: "There are bikes everywhere and it's perfect for the New Yorkers who have always been totally impatient. What I love, is to see them all on wheels, on their way to work in the morning in their business suits, the women in their office clothes ... It has a very humorous and a very practical effect for New Yorkers ... I mean, it's wonderful." After breaking a kneecap in a biking accident in 2015, he wore a cast and used a cane to cover a Mostly Mozart Festival gala.

他打造了自己的时尚标志，穿着自己的制服——包括黑色运动鞋和蓝色工人外套。他唯一的配件是一台照相机。他骑着自行车在曼哈顿旅行，不断更换因盗窃和事故中被损坏的自行车。他赞美纽约在2013年推出的一项城市自行车共享计划：“到处都是自行车，这特别适合那些总是没有耐心的纽约人。我很喜欢看他们在早晨骑着自行车去上班，男人穿着西装，女人穿着工作服…这些自行车对纽约人来说是那么幽默又如此使用…我是指，这真是太棒了。”2015年，他在一次自行车事故中膝盖骨骨折，他拄着拐杖，打着石膏参加了Mostly Mozart Festival音乐庆典。

For eight years beginning in 1968, Cunningham built a collection of vintage fashions and photographed Editta Sherman in vintage costumes using significant Manhattan buildings of the same period as the backdrop. Years later he explained that "We would collect all these wonderful dresses in thrift shops and at street fairs. There is a picture of two 1860 taffeta dresses, pre–Civil War–we paid $20 apiece. No one wanted this stuff. A Courrèges I think was $2. The kids were into mixing up hippie stuff, and I was just crazed for all the high fashion." They project grew to 1,800 locations and 500 outfits. A selection of these photos were displayed in 1977 in an exhibit at the Fashion Institute of Technology called the "Facades Project". In 1978, he published Facades, a collection of 128 of these photographs.

从1968年开始的八年里，坎宁安涉及了一系列复古时装，并以曼哈顿的一些标志性建筑建筑为背景，为Editta Sherman拍摄了复古时装的照片。几年后他解释道：“我们会在旧货市场和集市上收集这些漂亮的衣服。这张照片是两件1860年内战时期的塔夫绸连衣裙，没人会要这个，但我们付了20美元，一件我认为它只值2美元的长裙。孩子们喜欢混搭嬉皮风格，而我对所有的高级时尚着迷。”他们的项目发展至1800个地点和500件衣服。1977年，一部分精选照片在一家时装技术学院的一个名为“Facades Project”的展览中展出。1978年，他出版了一本《Facades》，收录了其中的128张照片。

Awards and Honors

奖励与荣耀

In 1983 the Council of Fashion Designers of America named Cunningham the outstanding photographer of the year. In 2008 he was awarded the Officier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. 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." In 2009, he was named a "living landmark" by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. In 2012 he received the Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence. The invitations to the award ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria read "Come Dressed for Bill"

1983年，美国时装设计师协会提名坎宁安为年度杰出摄影师。2008年，他被法国文化部授予“艺术与文学勋章”。当他在巴黎的颁奖典礼接收奖项时，他拍下了观众的照片并告诉他们：“今天与往常一样：寻找美丽的人会找到它。”2009年，他被美国地标保护协会命名为“活地标”。2012年，他获得卡内基音乐厅卓越奖章，这场在华尔道夫酒店举行的颁奖典礼的请柬上写着“为比尔着盛装出席”。

Cunningham died age 87 in New York City on June 25, 2016, after being hospitalized for a stroke. His death was widely reported in both the fashion and the general press.

2016年6月25日，坎宁安因一场中风而住院后在纽约逝世，享年87岁。他的离世在时尚界和大众媒体上广为报道。

End.

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原文地址：https://zeitgeistfilms.com/sitelets/billcunninghamnewyork/aboutbill.html

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*备注：

英语姓名的一般结构为：教名+自取名+姓。如 William John Cunningham。

但在很多场合中间名往往略去不写，而且许多人更喜欢用昵称取代正式教名，如 Bill Cunningham。

而在英语的昵称里，Bill属于William 的一个昵称。

这就是为什么在纪录片里，Bill早期开女帽店时在帽子里缝制的名字是“William J”，而后来大家都称他为Bill。

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P.S.

最后，贴一段纪录片中我很喜欢的一段：

等一个下雨天，带上相机出门拍照吧^ ^

文/ 小铁