RESEARCH FINDINGS/IMAP
Research findings
Corinne Day gained her heroin chic documentary photography naturally through influence from documentary film maker husband Mark, rock band Pusherman, anti-glamour grunge, her dad and possibly Nan Goldin.
Georgina, Brixton is a documentary style fashion image, typical of heroin chic thats influence is still resonant in fashion images today. The likes of Vice magazine and website are continually fixed on this style.
Corinne tried to bridge the gap between glamour and everyday people.
Corinne tried to incorporate imperfection into the relentless perfect beauty of fashion images of the 80s.
Corinne enjoyed documentary photography.
The different phases of her life are portrayed truthfully through her images.
References
– Corinne Day, Diary, November 2000, Kruse Verlag
– ‘I’m a photogaphy junkie’ Interview with the Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2000/sep/03/features.review7, 9/2002
Bibliography
– http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/photographerframe.php?photographerid=ph016 (24 september)
– corinnedaydiary, Kruse Verlag, 11/2000
-http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=2649&page=1 Nan one month after being battered, Nan Goldin, accessed 28/11/2010
– http://www.larryclark.us/ -Tulsa (1971), accessed 28/11/2010
– http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pxid=158 photographers gallery, accessed 28/11/2010
– Corinne Day, Diary, November 2000, Kruse Verlag
– Photography: a cultural history, Mary Warner Marien, pg7-107, enter fashion, 2002,laurencekingpublishers, accessed 28/11/2010
– Fashion, desire and anxiety: image and morality in the 20th century, Rebecca Arnold, Heroin chic pg48, 2001, accessed 28/11/2010
– Heroin chic, urbandictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=heroin%20chic, 28/11/2010
– Grunge, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Grunge+rock, accessed 28/11/2010
– Corinne Day, Douglas Martin, New York Times / September 6, 2010, New york times
– Kurt Cobain image, http://www.smh.com.au/news/music/cobain-is-the-new-elvis/2006/10/25/1161699375968.html, October 25, 2006, accessed 28/11/2010
– http://www.independent.co.uk/news/a-smack-in-the-face-for-the-gurus-of-heroin-chic-1262928.html Tamsin Blanchard, Friday, 23 May 1997, (accessed 28/11/2010)
– Chandler, D (2002), Semiotics: The Basics, Routledge, pp194-205 and at: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem09.html, accessed 28/11/2010
– Bignell, J. (2002), Media Semiotics (2nd ed.), Manchester University Press , p44
– Branston, G. & Stafford, R. (2006), The Media Student’s Book (4th ed.), Routledge, chapter 3
– Gillespie, M. & Toynbee, J. (2006), Analysing Media Texts, Open University Press , pp55-64
– http://nymag.com/fashion/models/kmoss/katemoss/#, (accessed 28/11/2010)
– Corinne Day, Fashion and documentary photographer,Jennie Ambrose, http://www.redcmarketing.net/we-like/corinne-day-fashion-documentary-photographer/September 27th, 2010
– http://racked.com/archives/2010/08/28/breaking-unconfirmed-corinne-day-british-fashion-photographer.php, Saturday, August 28, 2010, by Danica Lo
– http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=509575
– IFQ, Mai Meksawan – IFQ StaffExclusive interview with filmmaker Mark Szaszy and photographer Corinne Day
– ‘I’m a photogaphy junkie’ Interview with the Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2000/sep/03/features.review7, 9/2002, accessed 28/11/2010
– http://www.fashionmodeldirectory.com/models/georgina_cooper/, (accessed 28/11/2010)
– http://www.corinneday.co.uk/exhibitions.php?action=zoo, accessed 28/11/2010
– m&id=162&exhibition_id=1, National Portrait Gallery, 15-02-2007, CORINNE DAY, accessed 28/11/2010
– http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/confidential/abbey-lee-kershaw-career-mushrooms/story-e6frf96o-1225780184039 27/9, 2009, Abbey Lee, accessed 28/11/2010
– Cover of Vogue, Modelinia, http://www.modelinia.com/slideshows/covers–cindy-crawford/107#/3, January 1990, accessed 28/11/2010
A DAY IN BRIXTON
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Grunge/Heroin Chic
Grunge
n. Slang
- Filth; dirt.
- A style of rock music that incorporates elements of punk rock and heavy metal, popularized in the early 1990s and often marked by lyrics exhibiting nihilism, dissatisfaction, or apathy.
The grunge culture beginning in the late 80s early 90s coming to prominence with bands such as Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam and Nirvana. The music was a combination of various genres including rock, metal and punk. The image was to appear scruffy , down and out and usually associated with drug use. Grunge culture began as a sub-culture although can be considered a key movement that some would say reflects the decade. 
Kurt Cobain
Heroin chic
The look that was popular in the 90s and is coming back now. Being waif skinny, pale, tired and sickly looking, using cigarette smoke as perfume, lanky, and wearing clothes that hang off your emaciated body will give you the ‘heroin chic’ look. you are supposed to look like you have been up for the past week partying and you are worn out (but in a cool way). There was a lot of public outcry about this look saying it encouraged children to try drugs and saying drugs were cool. Urban dictionary
‘There were two defining moments along the way, both involving Moss. The first was in 1990, when some of the first published fashion photographs of Moss, taken by Ms. Day, appeared in the British magazine The Face. One showed Moss topless; another suggested she was naked. She wore a mix of designer and secondhand clothes and no makeup over her freckles, and her expression was sincere. The photos seemed to usher in a new age of antifashion style. Artlessness became art. Some called it “grunge.’’
The second moment, in 1993, was a shoot for British Vogue that featured a pale and skinny Moss in mismatched underwear. A public outcry ensued, as some claimed that Moss’s waifish figure seemed to imply she was suffering from an eating disorder or drug addiction.
The grunge aesthetic took hold for several years in designer imagery of the 1990s, most visibly in Calvin Klein’s influential fragrance and jeans campaigns, and also in street fashion, with the throwaway style of flannel shirts and distressed jeans, as popularized by Kurt Cobain and the Seattle music scene.’
Douglas Martin, New York Times / September 6, 2010
The look they pioneered began to take off, christened ‘waif’ at first, then merging seamlessly with the US grunge scene. At the Paris shows, Day would laugh to see the second-hand clothes shey’d shot six months before being imitated on the catwalk.
Guardian interview
Photography: a cultural history, Mary Warner Marien, pg7-107, enter fashion, 2002,laurencekingpublishers, accessed 28/11/2010
Fashion, desire and anxiety: image and morality in the 20th century, Rebecca Arnold, Heroin chic pg48, 2001, accessed 28/11/2010
Heroin chic, urbandictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=heroin%20chic, 28/11/2010
Grunge, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Grunge+rock, accessed 28/11/2010
Corinne Day, Douglas Martin, New York Times / September 6, 2010, New york times
Kurt Cobain image, http://www.smh.com.au/news/music/cobain-is-the-new-elvis/2006/10/25/1161699375968.html, October 25, 2006
Critical Review
Critical Review
Georgina, Brixton
In a press conference in May 1997 American President Bill Clinton drew attention to what he saw a major problem of contemporary fashion. ‘’The glorification of heroin is not creative it’s destructive. It’s not beautiful it is ugly. It’s not about art it is about life and death. And glorifying death is not good for any society.’’
Georgina, Brixton is an image shot in 1995 by fashion and documentary photographer Corinne Day. It is extremely representational of her work in this part of her life. In her diary she writes about her dad being a bank robber and in other interviews she states how he was obsessed by money but the truth of the coldness and lack of love and intimacy when she visited his house. Coupled with the feeling of social unrest and unemployment in the 80s due to the Thatcher austerity measures could of unveiled the falseness of glamour and fashion photography to Corinne. In the late 80s Corinne became a model herself and it wasn’t long after she was introduced to a camera by future husband Mark Szarszy. Her subjects were other struggling models, photographed in their own clothes in the seedy hostels where they lived. ‘I started to realise that it was ambiguous, the life. Even though you’re surrounded by all this glamour, there was a lot of sadness. We couldn’t buy the clothes that we were photographed in, couldn’t afford to go out and do the things we would have liked to do as teenagers.’ No one was as perfect as Naomi Campbell or Christy Turlington. Enthused by this new found view of anti-glamour, Corinne began to shoot skinnier ‘waifish’ models such as Kate Moss causing controversy with the Heroin Chic label attached to her natural, untouched photographic style.
Corinne Day’s ‘Diary’ is reminiscent of Nan Goldin’ book ‘The Ballad Of Sexual Dependency’ as it has a similar honest aura and authenticity. Corinne’s argument is that she was attempting to bridge the gap between fashion and the everyday person. Corinne and husband Mark spent a lot of time with the band Pusherman leading up to the time when Georgina, Brixton was taken. ‘It was a great time of music, festivals, drugs, parties, music’, Corinne says about this period. Her photographs before meeting Pusherman were more focused on the natural beauty and frankness of untouched fashion photographs, like the cover of the FACE in 1990. The Pusherman influence seemed to add a dimension of drug use and darkness to her photographs as is obvious in Georgina, Brixton, which probably resembled the company she kept around this time.
Corinne Day criticised Clinton’s statement claiming that the images introduced reality to contemporary fashion images. Her argument was that hers and similar fashion images attempted to move away from the traditional representations of impossible beauty. Day was instrumental in pushing away from relentless perfection.
Having researched Corinne Day, the era in which the images were taken and past and contemporary fashion images I have begun to understand Georgina, Brixton in the context of its release and the author. ‘I think fashion photography has gone full circle. Grunge has become glamorous’
The image ‘Georgina, Brixton’ denotes heroin chic qualities. The skinny model, the unsettling environment, the unusual body position creates an idea of the undesirable counter culture that exists within the youth. Rock and Roll music for years has been regarded as ‘cool’ especially by the young in society. Their lifestyles usually involve sex, drugs and excessive alcohol. For decades younger generations have been imitating rock stars in terms of clothing. There is always an undesirable counter culture that abuse drugs or hold strong socially wrong views on subjects. Fashion seems to focus on younger cultures since the post-war era after World War II and subsequent years of experimentation and creativity. Therefore the increase in heroin use by young people and famous people for example Kurt Cobain from Nirvana contributed to the new style.
Corinne Day could be considered to have been in a fortunate position at the start of the 90s. A reputable photographer/film director teaching her how to use a camera, the experience of being a model, being surrounded by models and meeting supermodel Kate Moss who has now graced a record 30 front covers of British Vogue, her feelings of anti-glamour were resonant with much of society in this period. The time she had available being a model and on the doll. The grunge culture integrating into British culture along with touring with Pusherman. No one person can criticise Corinne for her role in the rise of Heroin Chic fashion. The era was presenting some of these new controversial structures and signals to youth culture and fashion.
Are Supermodels any better for the nation in fashion photography? Flicking through the pages of vogue you obtain a sense of jealousy, desire and unfairness. For some it may be pertaining to the sheer attraction to the images in the magazine, but for the majority it is the familiar feeling of inferiority to the incredibly perfect models. The beautiful models can make any item look desirable causing the onlooker to buy into the myth.
I think Bill Clinton is right to raise the issue in attempt to stop the use of heroin use. However I think the issue is or was far deeper entrenched than fashion which is the last stage and easiest cultural text to read.
At heart it is obvious Corinne Day enjoys documenting. Her images resemble the different influences in her life. Later on in life when she is surrounded by wealth due to her success, her photographs become more glamorous. She still insists on documenting, for example when she collapsed and recovered in hospital she asked husband Mark to photograph her. Georgina, Brixton may connote meaning associated with drugs and idleness, however it was the death of the supermodel that Corinne was trying to uncover, the relation to fashion to the everyday person while dismantling the myth of perfect beauty in being fashionable.
Bibliography
– Photography: a cultural history, Mary Warner Marien, pg7-107, enter fashion, 2002,laurencekingpublishers, accessed 28/11/2010,
– Corinne Day, Diary, November 2000, Kruse Verlag
– Fashion, desire and anxiety: image and morality in the 20th century, Rebecca Arnold, Heroin chic pg48, 2001, accessed 28/11/2010
– ‘I’m a photogaphy junkie’ Interview with the Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2000/sep/03/features.review7, 9/2002
Writing Plan
Title:
Georgina Brixton
Introduction:
Bill Clinton extract
Argument
Should Corinne Day be criticised for the heroin chic era, can she even be blamed?
Counter argument
Does the alternative falseness of glamour just support the myth of fashion?
Conclusion:
Was Corinne Day just lucky or a great documentary photographer?
Study Diary
Study Diary
- Firstly I have assembled some questions that I would like my research to cover, to create a structure to my research. I rented out the book ‘Diary’ by Croinne Day from the library which has proved helpful and is the fundamental source of my research at the moment. Familiarising myself with the picture Georgina, Brixton.
- Discovered the connection of Nan Goldin and Larry Clarks work to the documentary style of Corinne Day. Read a couple of books on their work. Starting to gather information on the net about Corinne Day.
- Researching the Heroin Chic and Grunge movements of the early 90s. Finding definitions, sub cultures and people involved. Discovered two good books ‘Photography: a cultural history’ and ‘Fashion, desire and anxiety: image and morality in the 20th century’.
- Comparing the 80s Supermodels to Georgina Cooper in the image and others Corinne used. Focusing on the level of retouching and artificiality of the images.
- Researching Corinne Day and Georgina Cooper. Reading up on certain biographies, obituaries and interviews discovering the personality. Recorded an interview with my friend on how she interpreted the photograph.
- Kate moss and her influence on the picture Georgina, Brixton as one of the inspirations of Heroin Chic. I tried not to get too involved with Kate due to the ridiculous amount of information on her; I tried to stick to the point of the blog just detailing her influence.
- From our lectures we learnt about intertextuality, Binary Opposites and textual analysis. I tried to incorporate some of the theories and to deconstruct the image to allow greater understanding of the context.
- I found an Article in the independent criticising the use of heroin chic images in fashion. The article highlighted Bill Clintons anger towards the movement and criticised anyone for condoning it.
Criticism
A smack in the face for the gurus of heroin chic
Clinton accuses the fashion industry of glorifying addiction
Tamsin Blanchard
President Bill Clinton yesterday fired a broadside at the fashion industry for using “heroin chic” to sell clothes. “The glorification of heroin is not creative, it is destructive,” he said.
But despite the intervention of the world’s most powerful leader, the fashion industry has become inured to endless images of skinny girls with pale skin and limp arms; boys with deep-set eyes and vacant stares; and models lying smacked out on some grubby floor.
The President’s broadside that “fashion photos in the last few years have made heroin addiction seem glamorous and sexy and cool” was the culmination of a campaign which followed the death of a 20-year-old fashion photographer, Davide Sorrenti, of a heroin overdose in New York three months ago.
Sorrenti’s mother, Francesca, herself a well-respected fashion photographer, has taken up a crusade against drug culture and vulnerable under-age models. In New York, heroin is the fashionable drug. Davide was not an isolated addict: friends, models and other photographers did it with him. Francesca Sorrenti condemns the industry for ignoring the drug problem prevalent within it. Instead of questioning a model who tries to cover up her needle marks, she says, fashion editors frequently turn a blind eye.
In London, style magazines such as Dazed & Confused, The Face and i-D have all used pictures of wasted, pale and skinny. According to Paul Hunwick, deputy editor of i-D, “heroin chic” does not exist: it is just another media soundbite. “There was a period in fashion photography when models were thinner,” he said. “But that whole look happened over a year ago. It was a reaction to the vulgarity of the Eighties. As a magazine, we have never promoted heroin. We want young, healthy, happy, stylish people on our pages.”
At Dazed & Confused, the editor, Jefferson Hack, said “fashion has a responsibility to deal with issues. It would be more destructive if fashion featured only happy, smiley people. Fashion has been dealing with real life issues since the Eighties and heroin has infiltrated every part of society. To ignore it is damaging.” He said it was unfair to point the finger at the fashion industry for what is an age-old problem. Photographers and stylists are merely soaking up the influences around them.
Photographers call this type of work art. They have been inspired by the images of Nan Goldin, the American photographer whose real-life documentary reportage in the Eighties of junkies and sick and dying friends has become the height of fashion. Her pictures of James King, the girlfriend of Davide Sorrenti, looking pale and hollow-eyed, were used by the Matsuda fashion company last year
The gritty photographs of Larry Clark, the director who made the film, Kids, have also been a major influence, not least on the advertising campaigns of Calvin Klein.
The British photographer Corinne Day has been attacked for pushing heroin chic. She was the photographer who first shot Kate Moss but she is outraged that her pictures should be labelled “heroin chic”. “The idea that any of my images could be mistaken for coming from or condoning the use of heroin is a contradiction and hypocrisy,” she said yesterday. “My style is about authenticity, naturally documented and developed through an artistic eye. Never has heroin played a part in my ideas. The shutting eyelids are blinks and we thought it would be funny to show something so natural.”
Whether they are using drugs is another matter. One booker at a leading London model agency has watched heroin come and go as the fashionable drug since the mid-Eighties. “It happens about every 10 years,” he said. “Someone inevitably dies and it’s not cool anymore because everyone gets freaked out. In the past year, it’s become the popular drug again.”
There is a certain glamour attached with the “tragic beauty” associated with heroin addiction. “The idea that junkies have glowing skin is rubbish,” said the booker. He claimed it was all part of the mythology of the Sixties and added that his message was clear: “We don’t tolerate drug-addict models. It’s not a moral thing; with bookings worth pounds 30,000 to pounds 200,000 a day, you simply can’t afford to take risks.
This article gives a good account of the era labeled ‘Heroin Chic’, the fact that clothes are associated with such a hardcore drug seems extreme. Images definitely appeared more gungy in this era however it seems ridiculous to burden a drug addiction on fashion.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/a-smack-in-the-face-for-the-gurus-of-heroin-chic-1262928.html Tamsin Blanchard, Friday, 23 May 1997, (accessed 28/11/2010)
Research
Interviewing a friend
Tess makes a point about the target Audience. She says it is unlikely that it would be aimed at lower society as there is no appeal to the environment of Georgina, Brixton as it may resemble their low living conditions. She says that it denotes glamorised poverty.
Deconstructing the image
</aBinary oppositions can be used to identify the narrative of a media text so we can understand what the image is presenting to us in terms of structure. This is important in relation to Georgina, Brixton as it seems to connote a number of meanings and ideas to do with fashion.
Culture : Nature
Synthetic : Real
Model : normal person
full : emptiness
healthy : unhealthy
fashion : unfashionable?
This image could be viewed as a fashion image due to the designer underwear and idea of ‘heroin chic’ fashion photography or conversely a snap shot due to the anti-glamour and, for its time, unconventional fashion environment to shoot fashion images.
The last Binary opposition has a question mark at the end. You would assume this is exactly the confusion in the interpretation of these images that Corinne Day was trying to unearth. ‘I think fashion photography has gone full circle. Grunge has become glamorous’
Past structures involving the myth of glamorous fashion photography used perfect models in perfect environments to try and glorify the image to such an extent that it tempts the consumer to step into the higher society and purchase the product with the hope of consuming a part of the glamour and lifestyle portrayed by the image. The intertextuality from this form of fashion structure has been inverted severely altering the image and explicitly intextualising with work from inspirations such as Nan Goldins work, Corinne was involved in the transformation of fashion photography away from the photographer focusing more on the model.
The Paratextuality of the image or more the Diary from which this image was obtained can be compared with that of Nan Goldins ‘The Ballad Of Sexual Dependency’. The Documentational structure is similar. Architextually the genre could be identified as documentary fashion photography or ‘heroin chic’. The Hypotextuality of this image is evident in todays fashion photography as critically acclaimed photographers often produce images resembling elements of Georgina, Brixton and the Heroin Chic look.
Textual Analysis
Chandler, D (2002), Semiotics: The Basics, Routledge, pp194-205 and at: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem09.html
Bignell, J. (2002), Media Semiotics (2nd ed.), Manchester University Press , p44
Branston, G. & Stafford, R. (2006), The Media Student’s Book (4th ed.), Routledge, chapter 3
Gillespie, M. & Toynbee, J. (2006), Analysing Media Texts, Open University Press , pp55-64
KATE MOSS
Kate Moss was born in 1974 in Addiscombe, Croydon, England. In 1990 Corinne found 15 year old Kate at the Storm agency in London where Corinne was commisioned by the FACE magazine to shoot eight pages of fashion named ‘the third summer of love’.
‘She was a beauty, but there was also something quite ordinary about her: her hair was a bit scraggy, and with no make-up she just looked like the girl next door. I encouraged her to be natural. I’d chat to her and then take the pictures in the middle of the conversation. I was trying to get the person to just bring themselves to the camera.’
The pictures made Kate Moss the face of The Face, and Day’s best images of her summed up the mood of British youth after the rave explosion. But Moss and her agency weren’t always happy with the pictures. Moss got teased at school for exposing her flat chest in one classic 1990 shoot, and the agency worried that the photographer deliberately left in imperfections like bags under the eyes that others would have retouched. But for Day, this was the point. ‘It was something I just felt so deep inside, being a model and hating the way I was made up. The photographer always made me into someone I wasn’t. I wanted to go in the opposite direction.’
‘Kate had had a fight with her Boyfriend that day and had been crying, so some of the photos were naturally sad. The photographs looked cheap and tacky, everything that Vogue wasn’t.’
Day shot Moss for the May 1993 issue of Vogue.
‘I think the press took the photos far too seriously and read a lot more into them that was really there. Vogue never worked with me again.’
Kate Moss went on to grace 30 front covers for Vogue and is one of the founders of the ‘Heroin Chic’ look.
Corinne Day now understood what she wanted out of photographs, to go against the conventional fashion images and focus more on the personal expression of the model creating a sense of identity in each photograph rather than homogenised fashion images.
Corinne Day, Diary, November 2000, Kruse Verlag
http://nymag.com/fashion/models/kmoss/katemoss/#, (accessed 28/11/2010)
Corinne Day, Fashion and documentary photographer,Jennie Ambrose, http://www.redcmarketing.net/we-like/corinne-day-fashion-documentary-photographer/September 27th, 2010
http://racked.com/archives/2010/08/28/breaking-unconfirmed-corinne-day-british-fashion-photographer.php, Saturday, August 28, 2010, by Danica Lo
CORINNE DAY
Corinne Day was born in 1965 although public records suggest 1962. She was 30 years old when she took the photograph Georgina, Brixton
Summary of an extract from ‘Diary’
-Corinne Day left school when she was 16 to become a courier to satisfy her hunger to travel.
-A photographer on a plane suggested she should be a model, so she became a fashion model.
-She met film director husband Mark Szaszy in Tokyo. He taught her how to use a camera.
‘these photographs had an intimacy and a sadness about them. There we were struggling to pay rent, living in a dump, surrounded by glamorous magazines that were so far away from our own level of living.’
-She was recommended to show Phil Bicker from FACE magazine her photographs
-Subsequently asked to take some fashion images for a spread in FACE
-Met 15 year old Kate Moss from Storm Model agency, who she shared an interest with music in Nirvana.
-Shot Kate in a number of natural locations and liked how skinny Kate was.
-Day didn’t like the amount of make up and fake environments and poses used in the eighties by models. She is famous for saying that past fashion images were more about the photographer than the person being photographed. She wanted to instill some reality.
-Corinne took her work extremely seriously.
-Photographed Kate for vogue wearing underwear in her flat. It was a casual image because she had been crying as she recently had split from her boyfriend. The media took the photographs too seriously and read much too far into what was actually there. Vogue cut Corinne as a contributor. She met Tara and Georgina Cooper.
-She shot 3 photographs of Georgina to appear in Ray Gun. This got her noticed.
-Corinne then met the band Pusherman and asked to contribute to Penthouse Magazine.
-Comments on how Nan Goldin and Larry Clark’s work is liberating.
Talking in an interview with the Guardian
It was his obsession with money, she says, that made her so indifferent to it. ‘My dad was incredibly driven by money, and I felt like I lost him to it. When I was a kid he had a big house, but I hated going there. It never felt like home. There was no love there.’
Maybe her dads obsession with money affected her outlook on life. She could have created an innate hatred for glamour, falseness and money. Nan Goldin also questioned the environment around her when her older sister died. The environment around her was false, contrary to what society and family told her all her life. Life isn’t perfect. People aren’t perfect. She was close to her sister. Corinne Day could of read glamour in this way, especially during the era in which she grew up. During this period the conservative government had privatised a lot of industries, high unemployment and social unrest. Far from the glamour and beauty masked by fashion.
‘I don’t have great cheekbones, or huge lips to pile lipstick on – it didn’t suit me. 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. So I just made the best of it, and enjoyed it – I loved the travelling. We went to Australia, Spain, and ended up in Milan. That’s where I started to take pictures. Mark had a camera, and he taught me how to use it.’
Her subjects were other struggling models, photographed in their own clothes in the seedy hostels where they lived. ‘I started to realise that it was ambiguous, the life. Even though you’re surrounded by all this glamour, there was a lot of sadness. We couldn’t buy the clothes that we were photographed in, couldn’t afford to go out and do the things we would have liked to do as teenagers.’
Pusherman
Corinne met Andy Frank, a part of ‘Pusherman’ in 1994. ‘It was a great time of music, festivals, drugs, parties, music. I met Jess through Pusherman because she used to go out with Martin, the rhythm guitarist. Jess works for Vivienne Westwood. I went to the Vivienne Westwood shop opening party with Jess and thats where I met the editor of Penthouse magazine.’ Corinne was commisioned by Penthouse just before shooting Georgina, Brixton. ‘The pictures were published but the editor and Art director were sacked’ Corinne Day – Diary
‘In the beginning I thought I was shooting a rockumentary about the band Pusherman, who in the end split up because of drug problems around 1997 and left me wondering what to do next. I had introduced Corinne to the band in 1994 and she loved to photograph them and their lifestyle, so it was a natural spontaneous decision to shift focus from band to Corinne and connect her work and play with the band into a story about her photography.’ Mark Szarszy talking about Pusherman
Mark Szarszy clearly had an influence in the way Corinne took photographs. He was a documentary maker. Even his music videos for Oasis have a documentary style to them. This tour and introduction to Pusherman added another tainted, darker dimension to Corinne’s work, something we had not seen in the earlier innocent, naural photographs of Kate. Georgina, Brixton involves this new drug, grunge inspired look.
http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=509575
IFQ, Mai Meksawan – IFQ StaffExclusive interview with filmmaker Mark Szaszy and photographer Corinne Day
Corinne Day, Diary, November 2000, Kruse Verlag
‘I’m a photogaphy junkie’ Interview with the Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2000/sep/03/features.review7, 9/2002
A DAY IN BRIXTON 
