Where does all the time go? I think the organisers of the universe have shrunk the hours to at least half their size, and as the days get shorter my to-do list gets longer.
After a long time having a holding page with a picture of my cat on it, I now have a proper, beautiful and useful new website over at karen-harvey.co.uk I’d love you to have a look and tell me what you think. (And please let me know if you spot any typos or think I sound like a knob, thank you!)
I have a Google alert set up for my name, more curiosity than vanity (I like to think!) I enjoy finding out what the Karen Harvey’s of the world are up to – especially since I was told ‘You’re not Karen Harvey!’ by someone who had read this blog. Karen Harvey is a women’s wrestling coach, she wrote a book about a woman who gave birth to rabbits, she’s a fashion tech consultant, she can stop a dog fight before it happens, and she’s died a few times too. It’s no wonder I’m tired.
There was a rabbit living in our garden for a couple of months. We watched it grow from a tiny baby, eating daisies, vacuuming them up, the petals folding into its soft little mouth as it sucked them in. It grew bigger, ate cherries from a branch that Adam had cut down, ate grain from the chicken’s bowl, allowed Sasha the chicken to peck it on the head. And then one day it was gone.
I was interviewed on the Voice of Islam breakfast show. (Listen to it here).
I’ve been asked to join the British Beauty Council’s Sustainable Beauty Coalition advisory board. Ethical Marketing News shared the story here.
Toiletries Amnesty has also been featured in the i Newspaper, the Brighton Magazine and on ATV Today.
I went into London for the first time in over a year, to drop off some things for my friend Kentaro’s shop, Rooms. We ate pancakes, and then we ate pineapple cake, and then I gawped at all the lovely things in his magnificent home.
I saw the village terrapin, basking in the sun on his hanging tyre at the side of the river, up near the butchers shop.
Louise made the best shortbread known to humanity.
The dining room window exploded of its own accord.
I competed in the LCUK Speed Championship at Cadwell Park. I was nervous, having not driven the car since last September, but as soon as I launched off the start line I remembered the absolute joy of driving. And, I wasn’t last (7th out of 9).
Adam and I went to RollHard at Bicester Heritage. We saw a lot of interesting cars and I knelt in a puddle.
I joined Zoe for her top secret swimming club, we swam under the sun in turquoise blue waters, flickering light, cool breeze. It felt magical.
Somewhere between the puddle kneeling and the secret swimming I picked up an infection and septicaemia.
I’ve been sent some interesting things in the post: Japanese glue made from tapioca, chocolates in a little tin book, tulips for my face from Bloomeffects, and someone offered to send me a Trumpet of Death.
This month’s reading list goes something like this: The Age of Combustion by Stephen Bayley / a great article called The Freshwater Eel as a War-time Food Fish in a Natural History Field Club booklet from 1942.
At Shutter Hub we extended the deadline for our call for entries, Your Body Belongs to You, which will now be shown at Festival Pil’Ours, France in Spring 2022. (Women and non-binary photographers, enter here).
We finalised our first publication, POETRY, and selected an excellent array of images for YEARBOOK 2021 (more on this soon!)
And, the long anticipated Shutter Hub OPEN 20/21 opened in London (until 10 October 2021) at St Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green. You can vote for your Best in Show here.
I joined Photolucida as a juror for their Critical Mass award, and Exposure Photography Festival to give an Emerging Photographer Award.
How I See You, an exhibition I curated as a collaboration between Shutter Hub and US based Float Magazine, launched, bringing together touching and beautiful representations of people through objects, spaces and abstraction, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad, and everything in between.
And then I slept. Log-like.
If you’d like to keep up with the talks, reviews, exhibitions, events (and so on) that I’m involved with, you can find my Agenda on my new website. And, if you’d like updates in your inbox, you can join my mailing list here.
