I recently read Man on Wire, Phillipe Petit’s memoir of his 1974 high-wire walk between the World Trade Center twin towers, and watched Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press’s documentary about the street-style fashion photographer. Both are about artists who use the city as a medium and whose obsession, eccentricity and effort let them create sublime works that live in the city’s imagination.

Petit’s eight crossings between the towers and Cunningham’s decades of newspaper columns each delight momentarily when first encountered but also linger and grow in strength: they both define — and are about — the possibilities of the city.

Like countless other ambitious young artists, Petit, from small-town France, and Cunningham, from Boston, came to New York to find an audience. Through their singular triumphs, each became a native of the city.