Born in London, England in 1962, Karen Thurman is an emerging photographer whose work captures the magic and beauty to be found in the natural world around us. Although Karen spent her formative years in the concrete jungles of the Far East returning to England in her early 30's, she has always been fascinated by landscapes, especially forests, woodlands and the streams that run through them. She uses her art to encourage environmental protection.
Karen started photographing on 35mm film cameras in her teens and now works in large format black & white film, developing and printing her work in a darkroom built by her photographer-husband, Mick. Largely self-taught, she has also studied with celebrated master printers including John Blakemore and Bruce Barnbaum. Karen holds an MSc in Environmental Decision Making.
Ms Thurman's work has appeared in a number of solo and group exhibitions and is included in several public collections. A member of the Film Shooters Collective, she is a Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and Committee Secretary of the newly-formed RPS Landscape Special Interest Group. Karen is currently working on a multi-year project called On Your Doorstep, partly funded by Arts Council England, documenting the immense natural beauty to be found in commuter belts and other non-iconic locations in the UK.
Karen’’s work and projects can be found at www.thurmanovich.com.
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Some of you may know that I have been on our On Your Doorstep journey for a year now. The project includes eight exhibitions in eight locations - one exhibition every two months. Our schedule is a little crazy with six/seven weeks to shoot our chosen location, print, frame, mount, do captions/catalogues/flyers/posters etc. before we hold the exhibition for the location. I've found that in the rush to get things done, my "thinking" time gets compressed, specially in the darkroom...