Ode to Corinne Day

Corinne Day died last week of a brain tumor at age 48. Her work as a fashion photographer spanned the last two decades and even if you didn’t know her by name, you may be familiar with some of her so-called “grunge” photographs. See http://www.corinneday.co.uk/home.php.

You certainly have heard of her most famous subject: Kate Moss. A photographer with British Vogue, Day first captured the ethereal Moss as a teenager. Her unremitting lens revealed the flaws that other photographers airbrushed and her choice of unglamorous venues reflect the jagged existence of those who work in the fashion industry. Her work for Vogue embraces the other-world existence that models are meant to occupy: some spear completely at home in their haute couture while others seem like lost, awkward waifs. I am sure commercial photography became Day’s bread-and-butter but she pulled away from that world to document the lives of friends in a book called Diary. I have not read the book but her obituary in the New York Times describes her photographs telling visual stories, including that of a single mother’s struggles for survival.

I have commented before in this blog on the challenges commercial photographers face when trying to move in the direction of fine art. Why? Day said “I think fashion magazines are horrible. They’re stale and they say the same thing year in and year out.” Those of us who read fashion magazines on either voraciously on a daily basis or desultorily when on the checkout line at the grocery store might agree that the articles seem canned and featuring new cosmetic and hair tips on a monthly basis must present a challenge. Audience composition generates some of these polarities of perception in the art world. For whom and for what purpose am I creating these works? Artists have always asked themselves these questions—questions that can drive the feasibility of turning professional as an artist. The museum community has cast a skeptical eye on artists who produce work that operates in a non-art realm. Museum directors and curators have influenced and been influenced by the world of commerce for years. As boundaries among commercial and artistic, artist and audience, curator and artist, curator and audience, director and collector crumble, strains of the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” waft through my head: “You may ask yourself, well how did I get here?”