The Man in the Blue Jacket

One of the many good things about holidays is finally having the time to watch movies you’ve not had time to watch during the year.  I’ve just finished watching a documentary about Bill Cunningham.  He is the original street style fashion blogger.  He’s worked for many of the major players in the fashion press, pioneering the modern style of fashion photography and influencing many of the major fashion trends of the last 20 years.

After seeing the documentary and learning about his character what amazed me was that he agreed to do it at all!  He was so humble, so self-deprecating that he did not enjoy the process of being so exposed to the world.  The makers of the film had to drag information out of him to find out anything about him.  In fact he has devoted himself so entirely to his craft that there is sort of none of him left at all.  Many of the people who he photographs and even his closest colleagues knew virtually nothing about him.  They didn’t know his history or about his relationships (if any), what he does in his spare time.  He definitely seems like a very private guy.  I think if they had watched the documentary they would have found out more about him than they ever had seeing him face to face every day.  However they often said they didn’t ask; so don’t ask, don’t tell I guess!  And it maybe reflects the shallow nature of their relationship with him too.

But it also reflects the type of person Bill Cunningham is; that he is not interested in putting himself forward but more interested in putting other people in the spotlight.  It’s the nature of the photographer that your subject becomes all and the photographer is simply the vehicle through whom the subject shines.  And it seems wrong in a way that the photographer would become the centre of attention.  Bill lives by that philosophy and it is captured in the moment when he is honoured for his life’s work and yet spends the whole party taking photos of everyone there.

There is something pure about someone who is so interested in something outside themselves that they disappear into the background.  A verse came to mind “he emptied himself… humbled himself even to the point of death” People may criticize Bill with being obsessed with something as shallow and frivolous as fashion but there’s still something honourable about that way of living.  Therefore how much more honourable somone who empties himself for a cause much more noble; freeing captives, giving sight to the blind, giving good news to the poor, and this honour belongs to Christ.  He had all the glory on earth and in heaven.  It was rightfully his and he should have received all of the rewards that all creation could have lavished upon him yet he did not demand them from us but rather he emptied himself of glory and honour and became nothing for his subjects; for the objects of his desire,and became obsessed with redeeming us to the point of death; even death on across. 

 

And unlike Bill’s subjects who are beautiful and worthy of being captured and admired for their glamour and desirability; we are not worthy.  Yet Christ went after the things that were not desirable; the poor, the weak, the blind, the naked, the sinful, the filthy, the discarded, the humble things of this world and captured them in his sights. And made them beautiful.