When we returned to work after the first Covid-19 lockdown in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths, where I was the Programme Lead for the BA Design, my colleague Corinne Quin installed a photo booth in our building’s lobby, and at her instigation, staff and students all sat for portraits.

I remember running into my office, grabbing a handful of books from my shelves and hastily sitting before the booth’s lens. Here, below, is a rare set of photographs of me, which Corinne has meticulously saved as part of a collection.

Last year, she asked people whose portraits she had collected to also write something, to reflect on that time and the sense of who we were then, as people, as educators, as students, as a community, with a view to publishing them as a small book. Corinne was interested to know our memories of that time, of how the pandemic reshaped us, our research and practice, our teaching, our learning and our relationships with one another.

In response I did what I do — sat down at my typewriter and tried to encapsulate my sense of that year, in all of its mundanity, in all of its weirdness, and strangeness and horror. Below, the results.