Published by The Soon Institute, The Mushroom Collector is a self-styled “observatory on the near future”, mixing vintage images of fungi found by a friend at a New York flea market with Jason Fulford’s own photographs – landscapes, photograms, street shots and still lifes. All the images, including the ones on the front and back of the book, are numbered, and many are accompanied by enigmatic texts and captions. “It started when Ted gave me the mushroom pictures,” states the caption to image 1, along with his friend’s handwritten label, “Russula pectinatoides”, providing a somewhat unconventional cover. It continues with image 2: “I had just returned from Bavaria, where the Swan King built a replica of Versailles,” written below a seemingly unrelated lump of rock.

And from there on in, you’re on your own, as the images and text flow in a stream of random thoughts and recollections, which string together Fulford’s response to his friend’s gift. “When a song sticks in my head too long, I knock it out with L.A. by The Fall,” says the caption for image 10, another of Ted’s fungi, continuing on 11 with, “But when I hit the road, the mushroom pictures followed me.” Some of what follows is connected by graphic repetitions between simple still lifes and shots taken out on the road, as if fate were guiding his hand. “One morning I set this up” is followed by, “Later that afternoon I saw this, as if I had made a kind of abstract wish” (below).

Image © Jason Fulford

Online, The Soon Institute’s “Daily inventory of The Mushroom Collection” continues the numbers, images and occasional caption, referencing the published book and the events arranged around it, suggesting that the images are simply chronological; a visual diary of Fulford’s life and thoughts.

Though there’s an implication that this is all a game – to spot the hidden mushroom in each picture – the caption to image 38 in the book suggests that the search for meaning is fruitless. Or, rather, that it’s the point of the book in itself. Quoting Victorian psychologist and philosopher William James, it states, “Now let the water represent the world of sensible facts, and let the air above it represent the world of abstract ideas.”

Fulford reveals that he was given a copy of James’ book, Pragmatism, published in 1907, before he climbed Mount Marcy in New York State, following the same trail that James hiked more than 100 years before. “We are like fishes swimming in the sea of sense, bounded above by the superior element, but unable to breathe or penetrate it,” wrote James, providing perhaps the clue to the puzzle.

Thought-provoking, eccentric and humorous, The Mushroom Collector (ISBN: 978-90-810584-2-1), priced €43, is also beautifully produced.