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The English fashion photographer Corinne Day passed away 28 August, following a long fight with brain cancer. Day’s stripped-down, de-glossed aesthetic was a breath of fresh air when she rose to prominence in the early nineties, coming on the heels of the ultra-stylized shoots of the 1980’s. Today, she’s most famous for one such pared-down editorial that ran in Britain’s The Face in July of 1990—one that launched the career of her friend, a then-unknown 16-year-old named Kate Moss. (She later shot Moss for her first Vogue cover, in 1993, and for the National Portrait Gallery, as well.)
Day was 45.

Corinne Day with Kate Moss in 2007 © PA Photos

Corinne Day, the fashion and fine art photographer whose photos of model Kate Moss were credited with launching the “grunge” look in fashion photography in the Nineties, died August 28, Vogue Italia magazine reports.

A self-taught photographer, Day worked briefly as a model before she decided to start taking photos of her friends. She showed the work to the influential British style magazine The Face.  Editors there suggested she try photographing a model. In 1990, the magazine published her photos of a then unknown teenager named Kate Moss. The intimate, black and white photos showing Moss wearing Birkenstocks and no make up made both Moss and Day overnight sensations and, according to Robin Muir, former photo editor of British Vogue, paved the way for unadorned fashion photographs by Glen Luchford, David Sims and others.

In a 2008 interview published in PDN, Day said, “It’s easier to shoot if you know the model well because they relax and you get more from them.” She said, “My photographs of her were really portraits.”

She landed assignments for editorial clients as well as advertisers like Barnes & Noble.   In 1993 British Vogue commissioned Day to shoot Moss again. The photos were criticized for encouraging anorexia and “heroin chic.”

Following the outcry, Day withdrew from fashion photography. In 1996, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and she asked her boyfriend, director Mark Szaszy, to document her treatment. In 1999, she photographed the cover for the Moby album Play. Day, who told PDN that Nan Goldin’s 1986 book “Ballad of Sexual Dependancy” had taught her that “photography could go wherever you want” spent most of the late Nineties photographing the lives of family member and close friends, including the drug use of a friend.  The work was published in 2000 as a book, Corinne Day’s Diary, and was exhibited at the Photographers Gallery in London.

She returned to fashion photography and was soon shooting for British, Italian and Japanese Vogue. In 2000, her images were included in the exhibit “Imperfect Beauty” at the Victoria and Albert Museum and in “The Face of Fashion” at London’s National Portrait Gallery.

Last fall, as Day began treatment for cancer. British retailer Topshop and the Premier Model Management agency held a print sale and solicited donations to help fund her care and travel.

Kate Moss by Corinne Day in The Face 1990

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