Lot 144: Corinne Day (British, 1965-2010) Untitled (George in the Bath), 1994 50.8 x 60.8cm (20 x 23 15/16in).

Untitled (George in the Bath), 1994
C-type print, signed, dated '2000' and numbered '2/7' in ink on the reverse.
50.8 x 60.8cm (20 x 23 15/16in).

Corinne Day, who died earlier this year, was a British fashion and documentary photographer whose images of Kate Moss catapulted her, and the model, to fame. Day's eight page fashion shoot of Moss for FACE caused furore when it was published in 1990, many of the images implying that the then 16-year old Moss was naked. In 1993, Day shot Moss again for Vogue, a cover that spearheaded the grunge look, dubbed 'heroin chic', that defined British fashion culture and celebrity photography throughout the '90s. A self-taught photographer, Day brought a more hard-edged, biographical feel to fashion image making, forging long and intense relationships with her models and depicting them with a disconcerting documentary look that revolutionised fashion photography at this time.

Day was regularly commissioned by British, Italian and Japanese Vogue and has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Modern and Saatchi Gallery, London, and at the Whitney Museum in New York. Much of her personal time was spent taking photographs for her first book, Diary (Kruse Verlag, 2000), an intensely personal visual record of her life and friends, both bleak and honest yet tender and poetic.