Photographer Corinne Day prioritized realism over glamour, contributing significantly to the transformation of fashion imagery. She had grown tired of the 1980s “fake poses and funny faces” in fashion imagery (Day, Autobiography). An opinion which was synonymous within the fashion industry, reflecting the cultural shift towards heroin chic aesthetics.
For most of her early adolescence, Day lived in poverty (Day, Autobiography). With limited access to photography outside of fashion magazines, she began creating the imagery and aesthetics she wished to see represented (Day, Autobiography). She was struggling to pay rent early in her career, while simultaneously being surrounded by “glamorous magazines that were so far away from our own level of living” (Day, Autobiography). For a cheap alternative, Day sourced models with little experience through agencies, which is how she met Kate Moss, one of the most influential fashion models today (Day, Autobiography). Although Day had helped her achieve mainstream success, Moss claimed she felt “pressured” to pose topless for Day, stating that she “liked me with no top on, and I did not like it at all when I first started”. This dynamic was interpreted as Day contributing to the objectification of young models within the industry (Muller, 2018).
It is Corinne Day’s next muse, Tara St Hill, that I have chosen to focus on. She was a close personal friend of Day, who was frequently featured in her work (Day, Autobiography). Unlike many models, St Hill never appeared to shy away from the camera, allowing herself to express a wider range of emotions and allowing for a more intimate photographic style.
The first piece I have chosen in this section (see Piece 6) is from an exhibition dedicated to Corinne Day’s photographs of Tara St Hill, titled Gimpel Fils. I printed 2 copies of this image, one in its original colour and one monochromatic. I taped down the monochromatic version with duct tape, then tore up strips of the original image and glued them on top. There is an intentional lack of effort in this photograph; the rough, unrefined product represents the carelessness often associated with addiction, further showing the disorder and messiness that comes with recovery. Additionally, the melancholic blue tone in the original colour grading reinforces this emotional difficulty.
For this next piece (see Piece 7), I used an image of Tara with a child. The inclusion of this image of a baby helps put the risk of addiction into perspective. This piece is to help visualize the experience of a relapse. This reflects that an individual can have years of being okay whilst in recovery, having restarted their life, perhaps they have even created a family, yet remain vulnerable to the unpredictability of addiction. One thing can go wrong, and then you are back where you started, but now you have amassed all these additional responsibilities. The coloured image is the period before a relapse. The edges are being torn away as you try to hold it together. The monochromatic parts on top are the period following the relapse. This visual contrast depicts and reinforces the destabilizing nature of addiction and recovery.