NEW YORK-Bill Cunningham, a longtime fashion photographer for The New York Times known for taking pictures of everyday people on the streets of New York, has died. He was 87.
Cunningham died Saturday in New York City, according to Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the newspaper. He had been hospitalized recently after suffering a stroke.
"To see a Bill Cunningham street spread was to see all of New York," New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet said in a tweet posted to the newspaper's Twitter account Saturday afternoon.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Cunningham would be remembered for his trademark blue jacket and traveling by bicycle with a small camera bag strapped to his waist, "but most of all we will remember the vivid, vivacious New York he captured in his photos."
Cunningham began publishing a regular series of photographs in the Times in 1978 after a chance photograph of Greta Garbo got the attention of the storied paper.
After dropping out of Harvard University in 1948, the Boston-born Cunningham moved to New York where he worked as a hat maker and in advertising before being drafted into the U.S. Army. After a stint in the Army, Cunningham returned to New York where he wrote fashion pieces for the Chicago Tribune.