Alison Pouliot and the International Year of the Forests

Over many years, well-known photographer and fungi expert Alison Pouliot has taken superb images of our local bushlands. On her website she notes that her photos concentrate on the design, diversity and connectedness of living things and that her background in research ecology has provided her with the ideal framework to seek and understand the subjects of her photography. Alison spends about half of each year in Europe and from there she has sent Connecting Country a series of photos to celebrate the International Year of the Forests. They are reproduced in the slideshow below.

Recently Alison wrote reflectively on the importance of connecting with forests across the globe. The following is an extract from her essay which was originally published in the Castlemaine Independent:

When I first set foot in the local forest here in the European Jura a decade ago, I didn’t hear my footfall. There was no familiar crack of dried leaves and sticks of the Australian bush’s tangled understorey.  There was no warning call from pardalotes or treecreepers alerting all to my intrusion. And there was no shrill incessant ringing of cicadas above a chorus of buzzing insects.

The full essay can be downloaded here.

Apart from photographing the local environment, Alison regularly conducts her own workshops on fungi. Click here for information on her 2012 Autumn Fungi Workshops.