I Wash You Dry
Katie Burnett's second book: 40 stapled pages of self-portraits and collages, shot between her Brooklyn apartment and the beaches of Jamaica, in which her body shares the frame with homemade sock puppets.
The project began in 2021, soon after Cabin Fever appeared, when Dashwood's David Strettell asked Burnett for a book. She answered with two print-outs of sock puppets collaged onto nudes. Working alone, she is both model and photographer, shooting on a phone and underwater cameras and at times pressing the shutter with her toe. The black-and-white images are cut and mirrored into kaleidoscopic spreads, a device she traces to the synchronised-swimming scenes of the 1952 film Million Dollar Mermaid. Dashwood Books, New York, published it in a first edition of 750 copies, saddle-stitched, 7.25 by 10.25 inches.
Burnett (b. 1985) is a Missouri-born stylist based in New York, fashion director of Centrefold and a contributor to Vogue and i-D. She took up the camera in the 2020 lockdown, photographing herself with household props for Cabin Fever (APE, 2021), which the library also holds. Dashwood followed with her Curtains and Towels in 2023, and her photographs have been shown at the Ravestijn Gallery in Amsterdam.
