比爾·坎寧安：時裝秀永遠只在大街上

Bill Cunningham calls himself a street photographer, and in a way he is the innovator and prototype of that calling. Mr. Cunningham is modest and reserved, and street photographer doesn’t fully explain his practice. He isn’t a street photographer in the same sense as Elliott Erwitt or Gary Winogrand. He is not looking for extraordinary happenstance to make a remarkable picture; he is on the street to document the passing parade of fashion where it really lives — and as the public wears it, not as it is presented by editors, stylists and fashion photographers. As Mr. Cunningham has put it, “The fashion show has always just been on the street.”

比爾·坎寧安(Bill Cunningham)稱自己是一位街拍攝影師，從某種意義上講他是這個職業(yè)的創(chuàng)始人和原型?？矊幇仓t遜內斂，街拍攝影師不能完全概括他所做的事。他不是艾略特·厄維特(Elliott Erwitt)或加里·溫納格蘭德(Gary Winogrand)那樣的街拍攝影師。他尋找的不是不同尋常的偶然事件，拍一張不同凡響的照片。他在街上記錄流動的時裝游行——時裝真實存在的世界是大街上，是公眾的穿著，不是編輯、造型師和時裝攝影師展示的樣子。就像坎寧安說的，“時裝秀永遠只在大街上。”

A Harvard dropout and Army veteran, he was a milliner and a fashion journalist before he began photographing passers-by on the streets in 1978. When he began working, centering himself on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, Mr. Cunningham was virtually alone in his quest. While he is certainly up-to-date on fashion’s industrial machinations, his real love is personal style and grass-roots glamour. Today, the work he has done for 35 years is imitated by dozens of itinerant bloggers around the world, none of whom has as acute an eye for style or as encyclopedic a knowledge of it.

他是哈佛的輟學生，是陸軍退伍軍人，1978年開始在街上拍攝行人之前，曾經當過女帽經銷商和時裝記者。剛起步時,他主要在第五大道和第57街拍攝，實際上當時追求這種事業(yè)的只有他一個人。他當然了解時裝業(yè)最新的潮流，但是他真正喜歡的是個人風格和草根魅力。這項事業(yè)他一干就是35年，如今正被世界各地的數十個流動的博主效仿，但是他們對時尚的眼光不如他犀利，對時尚的知識也不如他淵博。

In 1968, 20 years after his arrival in New York and before he made his name chronicling fashion and society in pictures for The New York Times, Bill Cunningham began another fashion project, a body of work that became a 1978 book, “Facades,” and is the subject of a delightful yet subtly profound exhibition at the New-York Historical Society through June 15.

1968年，在比爾·坎寧安到紐約20年后，在他憑借為《紐約時報》用照片記錄時裝和社會成名之前，他開始了另一個時裝項目，他為之投入的大量工作變成了1978年的一本書——《正面》(Facades)，也成為紐約歷史協(xié)會舉辦的一場令人愉快同時具有微妙深意的展覽的主題。該展覽將持續(xù)到6月15日。

“Bill Cunningham: Facades” is the result of a long-term collaboration between Mr. Cunningham and his friend, fellow photographer and neighbor at Carnegie Hall Studios, Editta Sherman, who died last year at the age of 101. Like Mr. Cunningham, “the Duchess of Carnegie Hall” was a devoted collector of vintage clothes. On weekends, Mr. Cunningham photographed her on the streets of New York wearing ensembles put together from their collections. Each image matches clothing with architecture that exemplifies the period, ranging from the late 18th century to the 1950s. The exhibition features most of the 88 gelatin silver prints from the series, which Mr. Cunningham donated to the New-York Historical Society when the book was completed.

“比爾·坎寧安：正面”(Bill Cunningham: Facades)是坎寧安和埃迪塔·舍爾曼(Editta Sherman)長期合作的結果。舍爾曼也是一位攝影師，是坎寧安的朋友，也是他在卡內基音樂廳工作室的鄰居，舍爾曼去年去世，享年101歲。和坎寧安一樣，“卡內基音樂廳女公爵”也是古董服裝的熱心收藏者。周末，坎寧安經常拍攝舍爾曼穿著從他們收藏的服裝中挑選出來組合到一起的服裝走上紐約街頭的照片。每張照片都把服裝與代表那個時代的建筑結合起來——從18世紀末的到20世紀50年代的。坎寧安在完成那本書之后把這些照片捐給了紐約歷史協(xié)會。這次展覽展出了那個系列的88張明膠銀鹽感光照片的大半。

By presenting fashions in the context of New York City architecture, Mr. Cunningham traces the evolution of aesthetics from colonial times to the rise of Modernism. On the surface, “Facades” seems to be a lark. There’s something very light, even madcap, in this historical dress up, but behind it, there looms serious intention. “Facades” was begun not long after the demolition of Pennsylvania Station, the McKim, Mead & White masterpiece that still haunts the city’s memory. The obliteration of Penn Station was the most dramatic example of a process that has plagued New York from its earliest days, the destruction of the city’s greatest buildings — including the Garden at Madison Square, the Vanderbilt Mansions, the City Hall Post Office, Colonnade Row and the old Waldorf-Astoria hotel — driven by the irresistible force of property values. In 1965, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was founded to fight the loss of the city’s architectural heritage and one can’t help seeing the case for preservation in these photographs.

通過在紐約建筑物的背景中展示服裝，坎寧安追蹤了從殖民時代到現代主義崛起時期人們的審美變化。表面上看，《正面》似乎是一本嬉鬧的書。這些復古裝扮中有一些非常輕松、甚至離譜的東西，但是它背后隱約流露出嚴肅的用意?！墩妗肥窃谫e尼法尼亞車站被拆除不久后開始拍攝的，這個車站是麥金(McKim)、米德(Mead)和懷特(White)的杰作，一直縈繞在人們對這座城市的記憶里。賓夕法尼亞車站的拆除是從很早以前就開始困擾紐約的一個過程中最突出的例子：受到不可阻擋的房產價值的推動，這座城市最偉大的一些建筑被拆除，包括麥迪遜廣場的花園，范德比爾特宅邸，市政廳郵局，柱廊行和老華爾道夫酒店。1965年，為了阻止這座城市的建筑遺產繼續(xù)丟失，紐約地標保護委員會成立，人們在這些照片中肯定能看到保護的案例。

Ms. Sherman is a wonderful model for the clothes, adapting her hair, makeup and posture to each period with playful accuracy. She acts the part required by each ensemble and brings the spirit of the time to each, whether she’s in petticoats, bustle and bonnet or in a swinging ’60s mini. She fills the bill as a lavishly attired belle époque society matron, with great presence and attitude, but when the outfit required it, she could conjure up a Twiggy moment. In “Facades,” Mr. Cunningham shows that he is far more than a snapshot photographer. His compositions maximize the interplay between fashion and architecture. Ms. Sherman’s fur pillbox hat perfectly punctuates the daring shape of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum. The fantastical bonnet of flowers and feathers she wears posing in front of Grand Central Terminal echoes the drama of Jules-Félix Coutan’s sculpture of Hercules, Minerva and Mercury atop the clock on the facade.

舍爾曼是這些衣服精彩的模特，她貌似玩鬧卻精確地根據每個時代調整自己的發(fā)型、妝容和姿勢。她按照每套服裝的要求扮演角色，給每套服裝帶來了那個時代的精神，不管她穿的是襯裙、裙撐和軟帽，還是性開放的60年代的超短裙。她特別擅長扮演“一戰(zhàn)”前美好時代裝飾華麗的主婦，她的姿勢和態(tài)度都很到位，但是如果服裝需要，她也可以有自己的“崔姬”(Twiggy)一刻。在《正面》中，坎寧安表明他絕不只是個快照攝影師。他的作品充分展現了時裝和建筑之間的相互作用。舍爾曼的長毛風雪帽完美地凸顯了弗蘭克·勞埃德·賴特(Frank Lloyd Wright)設計的古根海姆博物館的大膽造型。她在中央車站前擺姿勢時佩戴的極其漂亮的花朵羽毛軟帽與正面鐘樓上朱爾斯-費利克斯·庫唐(Jules-Félix Coutan)的大力神、智慧女神和商業(yè)神的雕像交相輝映。

While many of Mr. Cunningham’s photos seem to transcend time, others toy with it. In otherwise pristine period portraits, the present intrudes now and then as an anachronism. An early 1970s taxi interlopes on the stylish ’20s Gothamite posed in front of the Racquet and Tennis Club built in 1918. And as the chic 1940s lady, Ms. Sherman, in fox furs, a camellia-adorned hat and white gloves stands in front of Isamu Noguchi’s “News” frieze at the entrance to the Associated Press Building at Rockefeller Center, where a puzzled tourist from the 1970s looks on as if she’s just stumbled into a temporal vortex. The New-York Historical Society exhibition incorporates numerous charming notes that Mr. Cunningham inscribed with pencil on his prints in verso, such as this one from a surprisingly sexy shot of a translucent turn-of-the-19th-century gown in which the model’s body is silhouetted by the sun through the gauzy fabric: “The gowns were worn over pink body stockings or sheer slips. The custom of the French ladies to immerse themselves in a tub of water when fully dressed so the gown would stick to the body, caused an epidemic of influenza and many thousands of deaths that was called the ‘muslin disease.’ ”

坎寧安的很多照片似乎超越了時間，而其他一些照片則在玩弄時間。在原本純樸的復古肖像中，偶爾會有當代的事物闖入，證明時代錯誤。一個時髦的20世紀20年代的紐約市民在1918年建成的球拍和網球俱樂部門前擺姿勢，這時70年代早期的一輛出租車闖入了鏡頭。舍爾曼打扮成20世紀40年代的時髦女性，穿著狐裘大衣，戴著用山茶花裝飾的帽子和白色手套，站在野口勇設計的洛克菲勒中心美聯社大樓入口的“新聞”雕帶前，一位70年代的迷惑的游客在旁邊觀看，好像她剛剛掉進了時間漩渦里。紐約歷史協(xié)會的展覽包括坎寧安用鉛筆在照片反面寫的很多有趣的筆記，比如一張令人意外的性感的照片背面的文字。照片上的模特穿著19世紀末的長袍，陽光透過半透明的面料顯示出模特身體的輪廓：“長袍是穿在粉紅色的緊身內衣或透明的襯裙外面的。法國女士們的傳統(tǒng)是在穿好全套衣服后把自己浸泡在浴缸里，好讓長袍貼在身上，導致了流行性感冒的爆發(fā)，成千上萬人因此死亡，被稱為‘棉布病’。”

The “Facades” project was completed 37 years ago, and it surveys almost two centuries of fashion and architecture, but the photographs appear as a breath of fresh air at a time when commerce dominates culture and fashion is almost a religion. Bill Cunningham is not an innocent, but he is a rare purist, and this body of work is a testament to his undiminished idealism. The Cunningham philosophy of fashion is remarkably egalitarian, and it is something that every contemporary participant in fashion should take to heart: “Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life. I don’t think you could do away with it. It would be like doing away with civilization.”

《正面》是在37年前完成的，它研究了將近兩個世紀的服裝和建筑，但是這些照片在當時讓人耳目一新，因為當時商業(yè)主導文化和服裝幾乎是一種信仰。比爾·坎寧安也不是無辜的，但是他是罕見的純粹主義者，這些作品證明了他未曾衰減的理想主義。坎寧安的服裝哲學是強烈的平等主義，它是每個當代時裝從業(yè)者應該銘記于心的：“時裝是在日常生活的現實中生存下去的盔甲。我覺得你離不開它。就像你離不開文明一樣。”