A NATURALIST GUIDE TO MAGIC

NOTE: THIS IS A PRE ORDER. BOOKS WILL SHIP IN JUNE 2025.

The special edition is limited to 20 unique copies each with a 19x27cm artwork, embossed and individually numbered. Each edition includes a 6 x 9 cm original print from the book, hand stitched fabric and a pressed plant or flower, making every copy one of a kind.

As with many of Anja Niemi’s projects, the artist herself appears in A Naturalist Guide to Magic, self-cast as the lone actress in a typically enigmatic role. This time, though, there’s a sense that Niemi’s character is by no means the leading lady; nature is the protagonist here, its living landscapes and sentient spirit overwhelming Niemi’s presence more than ever before.

As was essential to Niemi’s recent journey, the images in A Naturalist Guide to Magic demand that viewers become conscious of nature’s subtlety. In inky monochrome, each one emits a slow organic quality—the visual sum is characteristically open-ended, its quiet poetry ushering in our own fantasies and projections. 

Between two realms—that of reality and imagination—Niemi probes at a range of burning questions. Whose wishes take precedence in a world where human control is the status quo? Where do our fingerprints leave indelible traces on the landscapes we inhabit? And if we can learn to talk to an animal, what’s to be learnt from a meadow, a river, a tree or a stone?

Excerpt from foreword by George King