Corinne Day, one of 1990s most influential photographers, passed away last Friday, following a ten-year battle with brain cancer at 45. The British self-taught photographer’s stripped-down, de-glossed aesthetic was a breath of fresh air when she rose to prominence, coming on the heels of the ultra-stylized shoots of the 1980’s.
Corinne launched Kate Moss‘ career when she shot the unknown 16-year old model for
The Face in 1990.
In
Summer of Love, Day photographed Moss running around the beach wearing nothing but a feathered headdress and a pair of Birkenstocks. The photographs, published in style bible The Face captured the zeitgeist with such acuity that they changed the course of fashion photography.
Day had unwittingly opened the door on a new aesthetic that had been simmering at lower levels, she took the work she saw in Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency and Larry Clark’s Tulsa and made the leap from art to commerce. When Day shot Moss
for Vogue UK's June 1993 issue hanging around the house in underwear, a hurricane of disapproval was unleashed. Editors described the photographs as "just this side of porn", "hideous and tragic" and coined "heroin chic".
Day photographed Kate Moss countless times, and the two were an amazing force of late 90s aesthetic.
The controversial photographs hardly seen as shocking anymore, but Day’s work fuelled a whole generation of photographers like Juergen Teller, Craig McDean, David Sims and Glen Luchford who took her underground look and applied it to mainstream fashion.
1993 Vogue UK
Day's work from various magazines from 2000s.
