The retrospective titled ‘Bill Cunningham: Facades’, which will be on public view between March 14-June 15 at the New-York Historical Society, explores the intersection between fashion and urban landscapes as seen through the lens of Cunningham’s camera.Beginning in 1968, Cunningham scoured the city’s thrift stores, auctions and street fairs in search of unique vintage outfits and scouted architectural sites on his trusty bicycle - even now his preferred mode of transportation.The result was a photographic essay titled ‘Facades’ published a decade later, which paired models—chief among them his muse and fellow photographer Editta Sherman—posed in period costumes at historic New York landmarks.In 1976, Mr Cunningham donated 88 gelatin silver prints from the series to the New-York Historical Society, 90 per cent of which will be shown to the public next month. In the course of the decade-long assignment, the visionary photographer amassed a collection of more than 500 outfits and shot more than 1,800 locations at a time when New York was taken over by drugs, gangs, graffiti and piles of uncollected garbage. Most prints in ‘Facades’ feel timeless, such as Gothic Bridge featuring Miss Sherman in a voluminous checkered dress with a miniature parasol in her hand strolling through a windswept Central Park, framed by the wrought-iron curves of a classic bridge.Cunningham and Sherman often traveled to locations by subway to avoid wrinkling the costumes, and the image captioned ‘Editta Sherman on the Train to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden’ captures the jarring juxtaposition of the elegant woman in a Victorian outfit topped with a large hat sitting primly in a graffiti-covered car.Another noteworthy photo shows Sherman sporting a men’s Revolutionary War-era hat, powdered wig, overcoat and breeches at St. Paul’s Chapel and Churchyard, the oldest surviving church in Manhattan where George Washington worshiped. On a visit to Federal Hall, Cunningham paired the Parthenon-like architectural flourishes of the grand building with a Grecian-style, 1910s pleated Fortuny gown. For a photo shoot at Grand Central Terminal, Cunningham - who earned his living as a milliner in the 1950s - created an eye-catching feathered hat that echoes the spirit of the ornate rooftop sculpture with figures of Mercury, Minerva, and Hercules.(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az