The encounter with A Naturalist Guide to Magic is an electrifying experience that hits you right in the gut of creative arrogance. As with many of Niemi’s meticulously staged projects, the artist herself appears in A Naturalist Guide to Magic, self-cast as the lone actress in a typically enigmatic role. Yet, as the accompanying text is unflinching in pointing out, this time the script is fundamentally altered, nature is the protagonist here. Its living landscapes and sentient spirit overwhelm

human presence more than ever before, relegating the artist from the director’s chair to a walk on role. This conceptual inversion is the heart of the work’s power. It immediately tackles the unsettling question that haunts us all, whose wishes take precedence in a world where human control is the status quo?

I am very jealous reading this book as my wife, and I love the western style; I listen to country music and dress increasingly cowboyish the older I get. We watch the likes of Yellowstone and side shows drooling over the settings. I am born, brought up and still live in Aberdeenshire so I can tell beautiful country when I see it.

The raw, autobiographical connection that fuels this philosophical shift is deeply moving and utterly relatable. Niemi’s project was born from a failure of expectation, her struggle to connect with a horse she had purchased. Her preconceived visions of the relationship they would share fell drastically short, inspiring a winding, necessary path of research and discovery. It became incisively clear that the tried and tested equestrian model of human dominance and animal subservience would yield little in bridging their respective viewpoints. Like her horse, Niemi had to pivot, reflect, adjust, and heal. This personal journey is a powerful, soul settling metaphor for our entire ecological relationship, a confession that our failure to connect with the planet stems from a stubborn, entitled refusal to abandon the language of control. We cannot conquer the horse, the river, or the forest, we can only learn to listen to them.

This ethical quest manifests visually in a spectacular, arresting aesthetic choice, the inky monochrome. By stripping away the noise and distraction of colour, Niemi transforms the landscape from a passive backdrop into an active character. The images emit a slow, organic quality, demanding that viewers become conscious of nature’s subtlety. It is in this monochromatic space that the true visceral tension resides, a white cowboy hat, the sole trace of a human hand, floats past a desert backdrop, instantly becoming a powerful, melancholic symbol of human detachment and fleeting presence. Elsewhere, the simple image of weeds creeping gently across a manmade pathway, slowly threatening access to a wooden jetty, captures the beautiful, unflinching power of nature’s quiet persistence, the earth effortlessly reclaiming our temporary, manmade structures. The horses galloping freely through a grassy plain, unbridled from the expectations of their owners, are a magnificent, electrifying vision of the very freedom and autonomy Niemi had to earn by letting go of hers.

A Naturalist Guide to Magic is fundamentally concerned with the pursuit of a new form of communication, one that is not dependent on language or dominance. It forces us to confront the question, if we can learn to talk to an animal, what is to be learnt from a meadow, a river, a tree or a stone? The text embedded in the book is as essential as the photography, a series of intimate, fragmented thoughts that articulate this journey of atonement, “I think we were meant to understand each other as if it was a language I already knew but had forgotten.” The entire endeavour becomes an unsettling quest to bridge the great human divide between the internal and the external, the rational and the spiritual.

This pursuit places the work squarely between two realms, that of reality and imagination. The book is both a meticulous naturalist guide (observing the external) and a deep dive into magic (accessing the internal). The monochrome aesthetic only heightens this philosophical friction. When she writes, “I used to talk to pinecones was I wiser at four?”, it is a poignant self-critique of the adult mind, which has replaced curiosity and intuition with control and categorization. The entire project is an open-ended act of resistance against the kind of knowing that stifles wonder. The conversation with the rock, “I don’t have to the rock said / by then you will already know”, is pure, perfect poetry, suggesting that the answers we seek are not granted by a higher power but revealed through radical patience and stillness.

The book is an urgent commentary on ecological reckoning, asking where our fingerprints leave indelible traces on the landscapes we inhabit. But more than a climate warning, it is a personal challenge to the reader. Niemi has given us a guide to magic, not through spells, but through surrender. She models the revolutionary act of simply standing still. “He refused to move what if we just stood here / I thought / that might be revolutionary.” In our frantic, attention deficit world, this is a beautiful and sobering statement.

Anja Niemi’s a Naturalist Guide to Magic is a stunning, necessary book for our time. It proves that the most profound artistic breakthroughs often come from moments of personal failure and that the most soul-settling way of seeing the world requires an unflinching look at our own learned patterns of dominance. It is a work of slow, deliberate power that will stay with you, urging you to put down your phone, to leave the path, and to finally listen to what the quiet things have been saying all along.

The book’s physical presentation enhances this journey of discovery, like a field journal documenting a personal pilgrimage. It starts off like a raw road trip, or a photographic diary of a quest, with the first image of a horse being immediately poignantly dedicated on the facing page, “For Mercury, my darling friend. Thank you for giving me a new perspective and teaching me to show up with joy, curiosity and respect.” This single dedication sets the profound emotional and ethical tone for the pages to follow. The second image immediately broadens the scope to the vast valleys and mountain ranges, with that iconic white hat visible in the corner, a “this is where we are going” type shot that establishes the scale of the challenge ahead. Further in, a front on, waist down shot wearing leather gloves, boots, a jacket, and chaps, all complete with fringes, feels like a deliberate “suit up” shot before getting down to the serious business of ethical transformation. At the end we see the same waist down image of her with leather gloves , boots, jacket and chaps both with fringes on it but this time from beHind its like an ending. we finish with the horse running wild after the journey.

This sequencing, from personal dedication to vast landscape to costumed commitment, transforms the photobook into a literary experience, a truly visceral narrative of departure and change.

I know this came out last year (2024) but it is hand’s down one of my favourite photobooks I have read this year (2025) absolutely a top 5.

Regards

Alex