Death of Corrinne Day

Photographer Corinne Day, who captured iconic early images of Kate Moss, dies aged 45

By Tamara Abraham
Last updated at 12:19 PM on 2nd September 2010
 

Fashion photographer Corinne Day has died at the age of 45.

Day, who was behind the iconic images that launched Kate Moss's meteoric career, and had exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Modern, had been battling a brain tumor for the past year.

A statement on her website said that she passed away last weekend 'peacefully at home, after a long illness.'

Tribute: Corinne Day, who has died after a battle with a brain tumor, captured some of the most iconic images of the teenage Kate Moss

Today the fashion industry paid tribute to one of its most highly regarded figures.

Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman said: 'Corinne was a photographer of huge talent and integrity. Her work for British Vogue was entirely original and will always be remembered. She could capture raw beauty like few others.'

Day's photographs of Moss, which were commissioned by The Face in 1990, and Vogue in 1993, heralded the so-called 'heroin-chic' trend, and were widely criticised.

But calling on her own experience as a model, she refused to retouch the images, remarking that she had always hated being made 'into someone I wasn't.'

'I wanted to go in the opposite direction,' she said at the time.

Controversial: Day's images of Moss for The Face sparked the 'heroin chic' trend

Bond: Day and Moss had a close friendship and even lived together at one stage

The images would become iconic though, and marked the beginning of a close friendship with the supermodel that saw them live together in Day's Soho flat.

Day's reportage style became a favourite with magazine editors and she was regularly commissioned by British, Italian and Japanese Vogue. 

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

In 2007 she collaborated with Moss again, and a series of head shots were shown alongside those early images from the Nineties.

Collaboration: The pair worked together again in 2007 on a series of intimate photographs that appeared in the National Portrait Gallery

Curator Susan Bright said at the launch: 'Corinne Day has a very beautiful, intimate approach to portraiture; she almost falls in love with her sitters, and you see these moments of friendship in the main body of her work.'

Day grew up in Ichenham, West London and was raised by her grandmother. She worked as a catalogue model before discovering photography.

'I don't have great cheekbones, or huge lips to pile lipstick on - it didn't suit me,' she told The Observer in 2000.

'I wasn't really a conventional beauty, I was quite plain-looking for a model. When I first saw Christy Turlington, all my hopes of ever getting on the cover of Vogue were gone.'

News that Day was battling a brain tumor first emerged in 2009. Moss was among a number of friends to support a campaign auction called Save the Day, which raised £100,000 for a course of chemotherapy at a clinic in Arizona.

Day is survived by her partner, Mark Szaszy. A funeral is believed to be taking place on Friday in Buckinghamshire.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1307996/Photographer-Corinne-Day-captured-iconic-early-images-Kate-Moss-dies-aged-45.html#ixzz0yTjmMjXJ