Bill Cunningham New York documentary

A few moments into the film “Bill Cunningham New York, ” its subject — the legendary street-fashion photographer and society chronicler for The New York Times — is seen darting into the maw of Midtown traffic, unconcerned about the threat of death by taxi. Fast, intensely focused and apparently able to tune out all but the shot he’s after, Mr. Cunningham calls to mind a war photographer, which is an unlikely thing for an 82-year-old fashion photographer to call to mind. Later in the film, however, Kim Hastreiter, the co-editor of Paper magazine and a frequent subject of Mr. Cunningham’s, makes the same observation. “He’ll do anything for the shot, ” she says, as he runs into the street to get in front of a young woman in a sequined sheath. “I’ve been in deep conversations with him where he’ll just run from me because he sees someone.” By this point in “Bill Cunningham New York, ” Richard Press’s captivating and moving portrait of a singular man and a passing era, it’s possible to view what Mr. Cunningham does as the flip side of war photography, and not entirely unrelated. He seeks out and captures humanity amid the maelstrom of life, looking for what Harold Koda, chief curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes in the film as “ordinary people going about their lives, dressed in fascinating ways.” In these fleeting and otherwise unseen or unremarked moments, Mr. Cunningham finds something creative, life-affirming and free, and preserves it forever. — Carina Chocano