Photographer Corinne Day dies

British Fashion photographer Corinne Day has died, aged 45. Day is best know for her work of Kate Mas, whose raw, documentary-style images helped sky-rocket Moss to fame in the early nineties. Day had been suffering from a brain tumor,

which had recently returned since she was first diagnosed with the condition in 1996. Last year, Day’s friends raised money to fund treatment for her illness in the U.S. by selling prints of images Day shot of Moss. However, according to reports, the treatment was unsuccessful and Day returned to the U.K. earlier this year.

Day began her career as a model, but soon started photographing her model colleagues off duty. Her breakthrough came with the now-famous pictures she shot of a 15-year-old Moss for British magazine The Face in 1990. The shots depicted Moss running naked on an English beach, and wrinkling her nose at the camera, wearing an Indian headdress. “Kate was 15 going on 18,” Day told WWD in 2006, when an exhibition of the images went on show at London’s Gimpel Fils gallery. “A lot of 15-year-old girls wouldn’t have developed a personality by then, but Kate was always a bit grown-up for her age — her personality is what made her so successful.”

Day went on to shoot for British Vogue, but her images caused much controversy in 1993 when a shoot for the magazine featuring Moss in a bare apartment wearing childlike underwear contributed to the coining of the term “heroin chic.”

“People called it grunge and heroin chic, but there was a naïveté to our work together then,” Day said in 2006.

Image: Kate Moss by Corinne Day
Source: WWD