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Morganna Magee’s Extraordinary Experiences encapsulates a world that feels like it is looking back at you. Never a passive mirror, the seductive romance of nature lures us in only for jump scares and that leads to morbid curiosity.

Everything seems the wrong type of fragile; one mis-step from a twisted neck or a nameless, quiet death. Tenderness is a form of mortality, not romance.

If this world is a mirror, it sometimes shows us what we don’t want to see. Flashbacks and déjà vu unexpectedly bring back memories we have tried to forget but haven’t been able to. Like your first childhood experience alone in the woods, agoraphobic and terrified, suddenly the menacing and uncaring side of life seems all too real. Nature’s too old, too ancient, has seen too much for one to feel entirely comfortable.

Moving between tension and relief, Extraordinary Experiences is not a quiet reflection of peace among nature, but a snatch of a dream you’re relieved you woke up from before it became a nightmare.

Morganna Magee is based in Melbourne, Australia, living and working on the unceded land of the Bunurong/Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nations, the foothills of the Dandenong ranges. Her practice explores human relations to the more-than-human world using traditional photographic practices in non-traditional ways.

In 2022 she published her debut monograph “Extraordinary Experiences” with Tall Poppy Press. The book was nominated for Australian Photobook of the Year, and was listed as one of the photobooks of 2020 by both Gabriela Cendoya and Robin Titchner. Enjoying the process of bookmaking so much, Morganna joined Tall Poppy Press with Matt Dunne and has since published “Beware of People Who Dislike Cats” in 2023. In addition, “Phenomena” a collaboration with Italian publishing house Origini Edizioni was launched at Polycopies, 2023.

Her work has been awarded and exhibited both nationally and internationally recognised by institutions such as The British Journal of Photography, The National Portrait gallery Australia and Miami Art week. She is regularly commissioned for editorial and large-scale community arts projects.Her images have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Age, Art and Australia magazine amongst others.