Giraffes // Cathy Rose & Tash Kahn
photography by Tash Kahn; words by Cathy Rose
You’re tall.
Is it a problem?
You didn’t mention it.
I forgot. You wanted to know my favorite authors. I was working on my list, which was fun, but then you changed it to “the books that have shaped you,” and that’s a different question. I mean I was shaped by odd books, not always great ones. Things fall in your hands. When you’re young, you paddle on down that river. I’ve started rereading one, a French author, Romain Rolland, not so known these days. I can already see he was a flawed visionary, but at age twenty, he basically knocked my socks off. I’d prefer not to say the actual title while I’m sorting out my current feelings on it. My favorite food is the artichoke. How’s that as a placeholder?
Do you like being tall?
It’s like water. You drink it, you swim in it, you are it.
Hah, tall glass of water, anyone ever—?
Yes.
Did you play basketball?
Ping pong.
Do you wear heels?
Barefoot shoes.
Not those ones with toes like a bear?
No.
Your parents must be really tall.
I’m picking them up at the airport after this. You could see for yourself.
Wait, in your Mini Cooper??
YOU, I think, we could squeeze in back, but you know what, let’s not.
Shall I guess your favorite animal?
Maybe don’t.
In August 2022, Tash Kahn and Cathy Rose met on a residency and started a collaborative project with Tash taking Polaroids and Cathy writing stories to go with them. They have continued with the collaboration from their respective cities of London and San Francisco.
Cathy Rose is a San Francisco, CA writer, whose fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain, the Greensboro Review, Fourteen Hills, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and practices as a psychologist.
Tash Kahn lives in London, UK. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, with one project in NYC that involved dust, three people, and a single Polaroid. In 2014, Tash co-founded the visual arts project DOLPH, helping facilitate 22 exhibitions across London, NYC, and Berlin, as well as partnering with two schools, The Royal College of Art, and numerous artists across the world. She is also a freelance editor for Random House and Sluice Magazine.