Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
GEORGINA COOPER
http://www.corinneday.co.uk/exhibitions.php?action=zoo
m&id=162&exhibition_id=1, National Portrait Gallery, 15-02-2007, CORINNE DAY
Georgina Ellen Cooper is a British model born in 1976 in Wellington, England. Georgina Cooper has been used by Corinne Day in a number of photographs between the years of 1994 and 1995.
‘I submitted three photographs of Georgina. In one she wore a black, bat-winged dress and in another an eighties ‘slaggy’ sort of dress. There was also a portrait in a Judas Priest t-shirt. When these photographs came out in Ray Gun, Georgina called me and said thanks because people were noticing her now. I was pleased for her because Georgina is a genuine kind of person.’ Corinne Day – Diary
Georgina was not a perfect specimen in the sense of no imperfections which some fashion photographers demand. She had a big gap in her teeth which Corinne warmed to as again it was more natural and distinguished her from other images. Georgina has subsequently achieved success as a model including the face of Spanish vogue.
http://www.fashionmodeldirectory.com/models/georgina_cooper/, (accessed 28/11/2010)
Corinne Day, Diary, November 2000, Kruse Verlag
http://www.corinneday.co.uk/exhibitions.php?action=zoo
m&id=162&exhibition_id=1, National Portrait Gallery, 15-02-2007, CORINNE DAY
Myth of the Day
A myth of mainstream fashion photographs is that if you wear the clothes that are worn by the beautiful, immaculate model, you will in some way inherit the aesthetic credentials and lifestyle portrayed by the image.
Super models are culturally accepted and manufactured ‘perfect’ women. Abbey Lee is a extremely successful super model
The idea of the ultimate super model was born into the 80’s with the same beautiful girls as the face of all prestigious designers. Similar to Twiggy in the 60s these specific unnatural supermodels were marketed to death and covered every magazine.
The images were heavily touched up making the model appear absolutely immaculate with no blemishes and silky smooth skin.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/confidential/abbey-lee-kershaw-career-mushrooms/story-e6frf96o-1225780184039 27/9, 2009, Abbey Lee
Cover of Vogue, Modelinia, http://www.modelinia.com/slideshows/covers–cindy-crawford/107#/3, January 1990
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
‘I wanted the ordinary person to see real life in those pages’
The above extract is from Corinne Day’s book titled ‘Diary’. I will begin this research blog discussing photographers and the era in which aroused and inspired Corinne to photographically document her friends and create her own style in fashion.
Larry Clark and Nan Goldin are two photographers critically acclaimed for documenting their day to day lives. Their natural technical competence as photographers is evident although crucially the importance lies with the incredible intimacy, trust and intrusiveness they are allowed with their subject. This provides incredible images usually melancholic and unveiling the lives of counter culture youth involving drugs, friends and the truths of distance within intimacy between sexes.
Corinne Day’s earlier work is clearly influenced by this form of documenting one’s life. As a young model she lived and socialized with other models which for some can result in becoming idle when not in work. Meeting film director Mark Szarszy and finding interest and also learning how to use a camera allowed Corinne to document her experiences and people who may of interested her. Her interest in the myth of glamor models being perfect, beautiful role models to the mass public, and the resulting contradicting reality that was discovered in her photographs of real unglamorous shots of models drinking, lounging without make up in dirty environments. The models could not afford the glamorous lives the images and clients they worked for portrayed. Corinne seemed to focus on this notion of the reality of youth and the ‘grunge’ lives these models led.
‘The series draws comparison with artists such as Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, who also live what they photograph. Like them, Day is curious about people who pursue experiences beyond the norm. She is extremely, at times even unbearably, close to the friends she photographs and yet she is so trusted that her presence is never regarded as intrusive, even at the most intimate moments.’
‘At times, Diary is bleak and despairing, as it chronicles these young lives with uncompromising honesty. At others, it is joyful in its simple celebration of friendship. Any sense of voyeurism is tempered by the fact that Day clearly shares in the lives of her subjects. Whether visible or not, she is always, herself, emotionally present in her photographs.’
http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pxid=158 photographers gallery
Corinne Day, Diary, November 2000, Kruse Verlag
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=2649&page=1 Nan one month after being battered, Nan Goldin
http://www.larryclark.us/ -Tulsa (1971)
Georgina, Brixton explicitly epitomises Corinne Day’ notoriety in photography in the past two decades. Her obsession with the reality of ‘grunge’ youth through her documentation style fashion photography is highlighted in the image above. On reflection the late Corinne Day can be celebrated for initiating a new era of more intimate photography that is still resonant in fashion to this day. The image shows a model in designer lingerie in a dirty room with grubby feet, she is in an awkward position sprawled over a sofa which is the only object in view. In this blog I aim to research this picture with great detail and investigate various issues surrounding the photograph. I aim to gather extensive primary research to develop an understanding of Corinne Day and the subject, to be able to contextualise my findings and through secondary research consider and comment on past and contemporary notions towards this photograph and Corinne.
What does this image and others of hers present and advocate?
Why did Corinne decide to shoot fashion in more real settings with models’ with more natural appearances?
What made her oppose the glamour of normal fashion images?
What started the ‘Heroin Chic’ era, and what effect did it have?
What is Corinne’ history and does it inaugurate her slightly tainted voyeuristic, ‘Grunge’ look tendencies throughout her work or maybe its quite the opposite.
A DAY IN BRIXTON 