Mushrooms & Friends 4 features still lifes of Ganoderma mushrooms cultivated by the artist Phyllis Ma. Ganoderma, a type of fungus that parasitizes hardwood trees, is a popular medicinal mushroom in East Asia.
Mushroom & Friends Issue 3 is a collection of intimate portraits of wild mushrooms found during the global pandemic of 2020. Foraged specimens are photographed as surreal still lifes, bathed in multicolored lights. Familiar gilled mushrooms make appearances, as do mushrooms with more unusual morphologies. Striking examples include a very phallic stinkhorn and its eggs, a puffball with lychee-like texture, and cordyceps sprouting from insect exoskeletons.
Special Nothing is a publication from Phyllis Ma, a New York-based artist working in still life photography and animation. In a supermarket in Berlin, wandering through aisle after aisle of processed meats, the artist Phyllis Ma conceived of Special Nothing, a collection of travel photos that take the form of still lifes.
Mushroom & Friends Issue 2 is available now on loremnotipsum.com. The second installment of Phyllis Ma’s Mushrooms & Friends expands on the photography of foraged and cultivated mushrooms in phantasmagoric settings. Familiar gilled mushrooms are featured alongside spongy, stalkless and club-like fungi.
Mushroom & Friends Issue 1 is available now on loremnotipsum.com. Mushrooms & Friends by Phyllis Ma features mushrooms from a Brooklyn organic mushroom farm and the forests of Upstate New York. These fungal specimens appear in fantastical landscapes, with their macroscopic details enhanced by dreamlike arrangements.