A young Kate Moss photographed by Corinne Day for The Face
This belated blog post is dedicated to the memory of photographer Corinne Day, who died on August 28, 2010, following a battle with brain cancer. I had just thought of her about a month ago, wondering about her latest work, and I was terribly sad to learn of her death. Her work will always inspire me.
I will remember Day for being the photographer who introduced me to Kate Moss in the summer of 1990- not in person of course, but through The Face, my favorite magazine. I picked up the issue with a girl on the cover who looked like a typical English girl, with freckles and slightly crooked teeth, and she wore a child's paper headdress. I remember thinking at the time, 'These are important pictures, they so different from anything else.' I was thrilled to see the photographer was a woman named Corinne Day. I expected to see the name of a well-known male photographer like Anton Corbijn, Paolo Roversi or Bruce Weber- all photographers whose work I liked very much. I thought Day was brave to shoot images of a regular girl, smiling, slouching and hanging out on a sunny beach, without makeup or fuss of any kind. There is one photo which really struck me, in which Kate Moss has her eyes closed- not in a dramatic, sultry way, but as if the sun was in her eyes. I thought this decision to include the shot was incredibly daring. The image feels both casual but deliberate.
Day's pictures were not the fashion shots I was used to seeing. I admired Day's ability to reveal her sitter's personality without artifice. Her pictures of Kate Moss reminded me of pictures that close friends take of each other. Our guard comes down when we are with our best friends, and Day's photos have an intimate and relaxed quality to them that is still relevant and influential twenty years later. I continue to be inspired by her work. Examples of her work are here: www.corinneday.co.uk/exhibitions.php
I was thinking of the most English song I could think of that captured both Kate Moss and Corinne Day. Paul Weller and Steve Craddock play an acoustic version of The Jam's "Liza Radley" that fits here beautifully: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0haQp1eAg8
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