A stylist by trade, Katie Burnett has always collaborated closely with photographers across assignments in fashion. But periods of pandemic lockdown, when she was unable to work on set, were a catalyst to translate her distinctive creative vision into the making of her own images. Using only what she had at her disposal - her body, her cats, her Brooklyn backyard, and an unlikely series of ordinary household objects - Burnett's ingenious self-portraits are abstract, playful and introspective.
Katie's work was presented for the first time worldwide at UNSEEN in Amsterdam. We asked George King to get to the bottom of what the work is all about.
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George King: Before we turn to photography, it would be great to know what led you into fashion, since much of your background is in that world!
Katie Burnett: So, back when Iwas studying Studio Art and Psychology in Missouri, my mother was putting me under serious pressure to travel, to see the world. At some stage my school offered a trip to London, Paris and Berlin. I remember my mum really pushing me to go, but I felt content where I was; I couldn’t understand why I needed to leave! Regardless, she essentially booked me onto this trip, and I remember coming back and telling her that I needed to drop out of school and move to London! She was like: ‘wait, this wasn’t the point!’
So I suddenly had this new sense of exposure, visually, to all these different things. I distinctly remember being in a magazine shop in London, and I forget which publication it was - it might have been an old issue of AnOther - where I saw this amazing photoshoot by Paolo Roversi. I was fascinated by it. -
"There were these really white polaroids, a picture of a girl in smoke, it was another universe. I'm always amazed by how a photograph can just lift you up and take you somewhere entirely different."
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GK: And you got your way in the end?KB: Yes! I moved to London at 21, initially to study fashion at the Istituto Marangoni. When I was there, I connected with a photographer, and she and I started working together. Our first big project was this video for Dazed. We did very weird things! It was a lot of fun, very exploratory. That was another part of learning about fashion and photography in a place like London; the wealth of cultural resources was completely invaluable. It’s a unique place to build an identity, so I felt really lucky to dive into that world, then come back to New York and apply it.
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"So when we got into lockdown… it was very silly, but I started to shoot potatoes!" - Katie Burnett
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GK: Fast forward a few years, and you’re working as a stylist for various luxury brands, and as Fashion Director at Centrefold Magazine. Photography’s always a big part of those projects, but I’d love to know when you started making your own images.
KB: For sure! So when I was living in London, I’d started to make a few pictures of myself and some cats around the city. It was a fun little project; something I made one cloudy weekend when I was stuck in town, that sort of thing! So there was definitely a prior interest in taking pictures, but I hadn’t yet properly used myself as the subject. I also remember a time when I was working on a pair of custom tights in my studio. My job was to paint them, for which they needed to be on a body, so I was essentially painting them on myself, rolling around and bending over in a mirror to see what I was doing! I took a few pictures of the process, but again, it was nothing in the sense of making an actual body of work – it was about documenting.
So when we got into lockdown, it was very silly, but I started to shoot potatoes! For a while, I’d take a different potato each day, dress it up, or put an image of a friend’s head on it, then make photographs. I was painting them, painting my arms, putting potatoes in my bra – just goofing around! I didn’t think it was going anywhere. For me, Covid-19 ended a period where I’d been back-to-back on set as a stylist – I was constantly doing creative jobs, but you just don’t have the same freedom as you do with your own practice. The lockdown felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity to do anything I wanted, every day.
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KB: Having shot the potatoes for a while, my agent asked me to send him a pdf of images that he could share with Loewe. I was surprised, but I made a few more images featuring a pair of Loewe sunglasses I had at home, alongside these little clay objects I’d been making. Soon after that, the British magazine Luncheon also reached out – they’d seen some of the potato images, and they asked if I’d shoot for them! For that project, I branched out into citrus fruits, shooting a bunch of images with lemons and limes, as well as some with ramen noodles. At that time, I was only extending as far as photographing my arms, holding these objects in the images. That got a bit boring, so I began using more of myself as a subject within the pictures. More brands then started to reach out – I first did a campaign for Helmut Lang, then with Burberry, and then Alexander McQueen. With these assignments, I ended up shooting almost every day for the whole of lockdown!
GK: It’s a really nice story. Very serendipitous! So these images laid the foundations for the Cabin Fever project, is that right?
KB: I now realise that Cabin Fever was taking shape without me really knowing, but I was just so immersed in such a fun process that I felt like the images almost made themselves – I wasn’t making anything for anyone, you know? There was no pressure, no expectations!
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"I sent some pictures one day to my friend, the photographer Paul Kooiker, and he encouraged me to make a book. The idea really stuck with me. Later on, having been connected with the publisher, Art Paper Editions, and when the idea for the book was a bit more firmed up, I could start creating images specifically for the book, with a bit more intention."
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"I don’t know that photography has the same integrity anymore… it’s clearly a different time!" - Katie Burnett
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GK: And what appealed to you about this way of working?KB: I’ve always loved making things, but I feel like the creative process for artists is particularly appealing because they’re generally making work for themselves. As a stylist, you’re creating, but you don’t truly have control over the final outcome – you’re a piece of it, but not the whole pie! So the process of making my own work felt so freeing. There was an effortlessness to it.In fashion, there’s so much stress when you’re working on set, this kind of ‘oh god, we don’t have look 25 from whatever show, how can we make this shoot happen!’. And it’s funny how my approach on set has transformed after making my own body of work; my assistants notice that I’m rarely stressed anymore!
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"Ultimately, you don’t need much to make a good picture. The simplest thing can often be the most interesting thing, depending on who’s looking at it. There’s been times in my career as a stylist when I‘ve wanted to really make a statement, so it’s been interesting to strip that back. "
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GK: Many of the images in Cabin Fever are self-portraits, though highly abstract. There’s also this strange sense of perspective, where the viewer’s gaze is often situated beneath you. What’s the story there?KB: I’ve always been really fascinated by compositions, so that’s a clear interest within the work. It was quite a challenge to take these pictures, because I was often in the frame whilst doing other things at the same time: whether it was blowing bubbles through a straw, trying to hide the straw, leaning over a glass table, operating the camera shutter with my toe! A more complicated method often produced a more confusing image, or that perspective of ups and downs. People often ask what they’re looking at, so I like having those unrecognisable dimensions in the images.Funnily enough, I was recently going through an old box my parents brought over, filled with artworks I made as a child. I’d totally forgotten, but I often used to redraw works by M.C. Escher. Looking back at one of those circular pictures I was obsessed with – with him holding a big ball and looking at his reflection in a table – it totally resonates on a subconscious level with the work I’m making now, all these mazes, and the self-reflection in that.
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GK: It’s always fascinating to think about where those different tendencies come from…these references must permeate your subconscious somehow!
KB: Yeah, and it’s interesting because for Cabin Fever, I really didn’t want to have many reference points. In fashion, there’s always so many references to what you’re doing, and I’m constantly looking up pictures when I’m styling or concepting things. When lockdown started, I decided to free myself of all those references and purely create. I think it helped me find a sense of originality, as far as that’s possible.
GK: And from a technical standpoint, what are you shooting with?
KB: I shoot almost everything on my phone; I’ve used quite a few different phones, and sometimes I use these underwater cameras. At some stage I was asked to do a shoot with Bella Hadid for Calvin Klein, and when that job came up, I knew I wanted to try using film. She was the first model I had shot, so it was an amazing opportunity!
GK: Quite some pressure, though!
KB: Right? But I figured if I could make ramen noodles look good, I could really do something nice with Bella! In the end, I wound up trying to use the same processes I use on digital images with the film images, but it just didn’t work. So I scrapped them! Starting out like I did, shooting with my phone as an entry point into learning about photography, I just don’t know If I’d use anything else. I’m also really surprised by how much I love the process of editing digital images. Working with photographers in the past, I had a tendency to idolise film – and the whole process of chance attached to it. But post-production on a computer is also an interesting process; the image on the phone is never final.
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GK: Although you often find yourself looking to the past, do you have any thoughts on image production today?
KB: I don’t know that photography has the same integrity anymore, it’s clearly a different time! The way we self-document our lives nowadays is mind-boggling, sad, but also interesting! There’s this sense that our brains have rewired themselves to record everything in a more photographic way, as if the human experience is being lived through an extra lens. That’s why you see my phone in a lot of my pictures – I just leave it in, or keep a trace of those three recognisable iPhone cameras. It’s like a third eye, an extension of myself. When we look back years from now we’ll see these archaic bricks in the images and be like: ’people were like this!?’
GK: I’m sure you’re well-schooled in the art of magazine-making, given your work with Centrefold. Did that experience inform the production of your book?
KB: Yeah, it was definitely a super useful foundation. I started in my role at Centrefold at some point afterI styled a cover story for them. I really got on with the founder, Andrew Hobbs, and we decided to relaunch the publication together, along with a creative director, Ted Lovett. It was a space where I had free reign to work with photographers, and we didn’t really have to worry about brand restrictions or clothing credits – I could focus on image production. So for that relaunch, we worked on stories with incredible artists like Paul Kooiker, Isabelle Wenzel and Marton Perlaki.
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"Andrew, Ted and I worked on all the layouts together, which was really insightful when it came to making layouts for Cabin Fever. I’m a Leo – so I tend to want to do everything myself! But I worked very closely on the design of the book with Art Paper Editions. It took me a really long time to get to a place where I was happy with it."
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GK: And there’s another book coming, right? With Dashwood Books?
KB: Yeah, so the new book’s called I Wash, You Dry. Dashwood approached me shortly after I’d made Cabin Fever, and whilst I wasn’t at all plotting a new body of work – I was planning to get busy and style – I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. There was also this sense I could do anything I wanted, so I came up with a basic idea to do something with sock puppets and nudes! I remember making a really weird proposal in which I’d collaged pictures of puppets, all blown-up and stuck on naked human bodies. That was the starting point, but the sock puppets took on such a life of their own!
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"With the new project, I was actually inspired by a movie I love, Million Dollar Mermaid, starring Esther Williams. There’s a lot of kaleidoscopic imagery in the film – with all these synchronised swimmers – so I was playing a lot with that idea, or that treatment of the imagery, in the spreads of I Wash, You Dry. There’s also a very surreal feeling in the new work, which comes from working a lot with the images in post-production."
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Some of these images will also be used as part of a bathroom set – a series of shower curtains and towels – that I’m working on for the luxury retailer, SSENSE. It’s still in the works, because one manufacturer I’m working with is refusing to print some of the nude images. But I’ve put up some prototypes of the shower curtains in my studio, and my cats are obsessed with them! It’s a lot of work, but that should come out in September, coinciding with UNSEEN and the new book launch. It’s a nice coming together of some of the things I’ve been working on in recent times!
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GK: Which of your works will be presented at UNSEEN?
KB: It’s a selection of images from both Cabin Fever and I Wash, You Dry, made up of two large prints and about twelve smaller pieces. I felt like merging the two series would give an interesting sense of how I’ve developed over the last few years in photography, encapsulating my vision in those different contexts – within as well as outside my home. The first series was made in such an insular environment, where I was only working with what I had lying around, so it will be nice to show another dimension of my work in the presentation, when I had a bit more choice in what I was working with. It’s the first time I’ve shown images in this setting – printed, framed and wall-mounted – yet that sense of tactility is something I’ve always been drawn to, so I’m really excited to see those two series come together.
Like with a book, editing an image selection for a presentation is tricky, so I was printing for days and mocking up mini versions of the wall in my studio to get it right! It’s always tempting to show more, but a nice challenge to have to translate your distinctive voice into a concise edit, especially when it’s the first time your photographs are being shown in the exhibition context. Unlike the with Cabin Fever images, which I was simultaneously posting online and contributing to publications, I’ve been quite tight with the images from the Dashwood book – I’ve barely shown them to anyone – so it will be nice to see some of those go out into the world at UNSEEN!
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