The Virgin Suicides

For her first feature film, The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola commissioned British fashion photographer Corinne Day to join her on set. Renowned for her unadorned, grungy photographs of iconic models of the 1990s, Day’s representation of female beauty met its match in Coppola, whose debut marked the first of her unaffected, empathetic depictions of womanhood. Edited from Day’s original negatives, this volume, which launches alongside The Virgin Suicides’ twenty-fifth anniversary, gives mesmerising and unprecedented insight into Coppola’s enigmatic staging of the Lisbon sisters and their suburban trappings.

In Day’s photographs, the lush mystique of Coppola’s set runs through images of the young actors at work and between takes, their candid posturing and pensive expressions reflecting the intimate and collaborative environment of the shoot. Fragments of the set and costume design appear suggestively – crucifixes, pink lace bras, homecoming dresses, beauty products, and toffee apples – all playing their part in Coppola’s depiction of the yearning and repression of adolescence. Completed with new texts by Sofia Coppola and Jeffrey Eugenides, this volume opens a fascinating dialogue between Eugenides’s original text and Coppola’s cult adaptation.