From 'heroin chic' to photographic heroine

Corinne Day's vision – of a melancholic, gritty reality – resulted in her being shunned by the industry that would later embrace her, writes ANNA CAREY

MELANCHOLY ISN’T the first word most people associate with fashion photography, but it was a quality that ran through the work of the hugely influential photographer Corinne Day, who died last week at the age of 45 and whose funeral takes place today.

“Photography is getting as close as you can to real life, showing us things we don’t normally see,” she once said. “These are people’s most intimate moments, and sometimes intimacy is sad.”

Brought up by her grandmother, Day left school with no qualifications and worked as a courier before beginning a brief career as a catalogue model, which was when she taught herself to take photographs. A few years later, two of her photo shoots would change fashion photography – and indeed fashion – forever. In 1990 she photographed the then 16-year-old Kate Moss on a Sussex beach for the Face. The resulting photos, barely retouched images of Moss alternately grinning and pouting defiantly, put Day on the map.

In March 1993 her photograph of Moss in a tweed Chanel bustier made the cover of Voguemagazine with the cover line "Fashion's New Spirit". But it was another Vogueshoot several months later that made both Day and her muse infamous.

Entitled Under-exposure, it showed a wistful Moss lounging about her own flat in plain cotton tops, simple bras and lace knickers.

Perhaps because lingerie shoots didn't usually involve flat-chested girls in vests, tabloids declared that Moss looked like a junkie. Day was accused of glamorising drug abuse and even paedophilia – it was popularly dubbed 'heroin chic' - the resulting outcry meant Voguedidn't work with her for another seven years.

But to many gawky teenage girls at the time, myself included, those images were a breath of fresh air.

Wide-eyed and fresh-faced, skinny but not sickly, Day’s vision of Moss felt much more appealing and less intimidating than the heavily made-up Amazonian supermodels who ruled the pages of the glossy magazines of the time.

Looking back now, it's evident just how influential Day's early 1990s work was. "She opened up the fashion industry to a whole new concept of beauty after the dominance of the 1980s glamazons," says Sam Baker, editor of Redmagazine, one of the UK's leading glossies.

“It’s no exaggeration to say she changed the way fashion looked. There are countless people who wouldn’t be in the industry today if not for her.”

Day’s intimate, natural, pared-down aesthetic and the awkward young women whose unconventional beauty she photographed became part of the fashion landscape.

In 1996, Day collapsed in New York and was told she had a brain tumour. She insisted on documenting her hospitalisation with the help of her partner, photographer Mark Szaszy. These images, along with other candid photographs of herself and her friends, were collected in her book Diary, published in 2000.

She recovered and began working for Vogueagain, but that old melancholic strain was there even in her lovely photographs of Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.

By the time her cancer returned two years ago, her work had been displayed in London’s Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery. The one-time rebel, like many before her, had been embraced by the establishment she once unsettled.