CORINNE DAY – DIARY
RESEARCHING A PHOTO-BOOK
Corinne Day is the main inspiration for my project, the stunning photographer uses her photography to document her everyday life, displaying the intimacy and love in her circle of friends and family. Corinne Day’s style of photography is often put in the ‘dirty realism’ genre; “a literary genre characterised by a spare, terse style that features struggling, working-class characters in sterile, bleak environments”. Her images are ‘real’, and display immense personal events and emotions.
1. Describe the story:
Diary – ‘her first solo exhibition in London – is the culmination of ten years’ work and is an intensely personal and frank photographic account of her life and friendships during the last decade of the century in London.’
Corinne Day: diary | The Photographers’ Gallery
Diary is cold and melancholy, it archives young lives with uncompromising realism in the form of photographs, so we as the viewers feel encompassed in the visual and not just the worded description. The books genre is clearly dirty realism and Grunge. At other times, the photos are joyful and celebrate friendship. Day clearly shares her life with the lives of her close friends, and decides to share experiences like hospitalisation, partying, drugs. Clearly, her best friend Tara is a main character in the diary, we follow her though partying, sexual liaisons, illness and finally, motherhood. However, whether in the photograph or not, she is always emotionally present in her photographs.
2. Who is the photographer?
The photographer of the book is Corinne Day, however thought the book, there are images of herself which may have been taken by Tara (one of the main faces in the diary). One can only assume that Corinne made the photographic diary to remember all of the events in her life, but I think it was also to produce photographs in a ‘grunge’ and ‘dirty realistic’ style. I think the book was really for herself before she passed following the diagnosis of a brain tumour in 1996, but also for her close friends and family, hence the book name ‘diary’. “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.”
TITLE AND NARRATIVE
The title ‘Diary’ is a very important aspect of the book, it simply explain what the book itself is; a diary of Corinne Day. The title of the book is written is what seems like Corinne’s handwriting, underneath a photograph of Tara’s face. Tara also seems to be a main character in Corinne’s life, a very close friend, and an important figure.
BOOK IN HAND
- large A4 square/ rectangle
- portrait book in black
- 56 pages
- 54 photographs
- hard cover
- colour and back and white images
- all same paper is used inside
- feels heavy, smells fresh.
- no letterpress, silkscreen or hot-stamping.
- cover is matte card with a printed image of Tara
- none of the words are embossed/ debossed.
image wrap/dust jacket. saddle stitch/swiss binding/ Japanese stab-binding/ leperello
DESIGN AND LAYOUT
Images are all placed in the same orientation on each page, and there is one photograph per page. there are also no double page spreads, but rather only one image to represent an event. Some photos aren’t of people, but they are aesthetically pleasing. There are no fold- outs or inserts in the book either, this makes the book very uniform and organised, a juxtaposition to the crazy, frantic life Corinne was having in the photos.
- one image on each page (54 images)
- landscape images, rarely portrait
- images are all the same size, just rotted landscape or portrait
- images don’t seem to be size edited, same size as taken with camera
- photos can be quite dark and gloomy, quite a grunge feel to them
The images are all linked together very well by how they are edited and by their captions. The photos all have the same ‘art-rock’ vibe, with gloomy, high contrasted and saturated images. Some photos even look to be taken on a disposable camera (however they are just edited in this way).
A narrative is constructed by the captions under each image, even though the images are not in chronological order. The captions are short and seem to be written in Corinne’s handwriting, making it very personal. She tells a story though jumbled photographs, however the captions seem to make sense, and really feel like a diary.
EDITING AND SEQUENCING
When looking at the photos in Corinne Day diary, there seems to be a particular selection of photographs; for each special (or main) event in her life with her family and friends, there only ever seems to be one image that represents the whole experience. For example: one image is of a man named Andy in bed, the image is captioned ‘Andy after party NewYork 1996’. There seems to be no images from the party in the book, only one image of a rather hungover Andy, which may be all that’s needed to remind Corinne of the experience. There seems to be no chronological order in her book, images are placed where they compliment each other.
