CS2 - Who Inspires me?

An artist who inspires me is Photographer Corinne Day, who is well known for her work with celebrity Kate Moss which began her modelling career. I discovered Corinne Day and her work when doing my Photography A Level when I was required to do artist research for my own project. When I came across her work I instantly became intrigued and wanted to see more of her images so I researched on the internet and looked at her books to better understand her style.

One of my favourite series of work by Corinne Day is her shoot with then 15 year old Kate Moss The Third Summer of Love where she captures Moss wearing hippie style clothing, but sometimes features topless. The shoot was for FACE magazine and was directed by the Visionary Art Director for FACE, Phil Bicker, and when talking about the shoot said “It looked natural and simple but it was carefully constructed to look like that. In fact, as I recall, I sent them down there two or three times until they got it right. Kate hadn’t been modelling for very long but, even in her awkwardness, she had that thing about her that Twiggy had in the 60s, a freshness that matched the times.”. I like this series because of how Day has gone against the ‘normal’ guidelines and boundaries of fashion photography by showing Kate looking goofy and natural instead of being made into something she wasn’t; which was how Corinne herself was made to feel previously being a model herself.

Another piece of work that I am interested in is her book Kruse Verlag 2000 which is in a sense a diary of her personal life; made up of her friends, family, memories and experiences that she came across in her everyday life. The style of these images is quite ‘grungy’ and ‘heroin chic’ which helps separate them from other documentary style photographs; by giving them their own personality and aura that links to the ideologies that Day has. When talking about Kruse Verlag, and her reasons behind her style, Day says that “To me, photography is about showing us things we don’t normally see, getting as close as you can to real life” which is shown in the Diary where we can see one model, close friend Tara St Hill, in many situations such as drunk, sad, on the toilet, as well as naked. I feel that this series of images really fit well with Corinne Day’s grungy and raw style of photography, so you do see the harshness of these peoples lives, but in a beautiful way because of how Day has captured them. Corinne also appears in her work because of partner Mark Szaszy capturing her when she was admitted to hospital due to a brain tumour. Because oh how she includes all of these experiences and memories we can get a better look at, and understanding of, her life as well as what she sees when capturing her photographs.

I am also interested in the way in which Corinne Day captures her images because she creates strong and close relationships with her subjects, which I feel helps when photographing a model since they would feel more relaxed around you; making them open up more, enabling the artist to take candid images that have strong atmosphere to them, just like Day did especially with Kate Moss. One shoot really shows that this technique works really well as Day photographed Moss years after their previous collaborations and was still able to get new emotions shown through images because of the expressions captured. This was achieved by Corinne talking to Kate about a personal subject, and managing to produce some simple, yet beautiful images.