Funga Obscura
Alison Pouliot
‘I scanned the forest floor around me. I couldn’t yet see fungi, but I could smell them. Lowering my nose to the ground, I inhaled a distinctive fungal funk. I rolled over some bark and there they were! Gossamer threads of mycelia wended their way through the layers, weaving them together. Soon these furtive fungi would fashion their mycelia into mushrooms and heave their way through the earth.’
This book is about fungi, and the photography of fungi. The title – Funga Obscura – unites the two. Beginning in elemental landscapes of ice and rock, the book traces the evolutionary path of fungi as enablers of life on land, and creators of soils and forests. Crossing continents and ecosystems, we navigate lichen-covered landscapes, crawl in the fungal undergrowth, scale glacial extremes and duck between rainforest shadows.
Alison Pouliot, ecologist and environmental photographer, captures these remarkable lifeforms in this visual love letter to fungi.
A gallery of exquisite photographic artworks; a celebration of the diversity, eccentricity, beauty and resilience of fungi; a meditation on relationships between all living things, and an invitation to wonder about our own place in the natural world.
This festival of fungi encompasses the cute and the creepy and reminds us that fungus is a vital component of life on Earth.
- Release
- Mar-2025
- ISBN
- 9781761170126
- RRP (AUD)
- $49.99
- Pages
- 192
- Format
- Hardback
Alison Pouliot is an ecologist with a passion for fungi. Her journeys in search of fungi span the northern and southern hemispheres, ensuring two autumns and a double dose of fungi each year
NewSouth Publishing
NewSouth Publishing is the publishing division of UNSW Press Ltd, a leading Australian university press.
- Rights
-
Translation rights
- Contact
-
Joumana Awad
- Website