Mushrooms & Friends is a photography series by Phyllis Ma featuring foraged and cultivated mushrooms. These specimens appear in fantastical landscapes, with their macroscopic details enhanced by dreamlike arrangements. Bathed in technicolor lights, each mushroom evokes a clandestine personality bordering on the majestic and the playful.
To Ma, the title Mushrooms & Friends has a compelling double meaning. “In a sense,” she says, “mushrooms have a lot of ‘friends’ in the ecosystem–they form complex relationships with insects, birds, plants and other organisms.” The other interpretation is a nod to the mycophiles she has befriended through the project. Ma often collaborates and consults with mycologists and mushroom growers to get a deeper understanding of the fungi world.
