By Amy Campion
There is a brightness about Magda de la Pesca that is immediately infectious. At 80, she is curious, optimistic, playful, and still delighted by the things other people might simply walk past.
It is an outlook that has shaped a long and colourful creative life. Magda has worked as a journalist, screenwriter, novelist, poet, radio program maker and publicist, with stories that include interviewing Jack Nicholson, dining with Frank Zappa, being proposed to by writer Frank Hardy and writing episodes of Prisoner.
Photography has also been a lifelong passion, and it is now at the centre of her latest project. Her exhibition What Can YOU See? at Mornington Community Art Space brings together two photographic series: What Can You See in a Tree? and What Can You Find in a Fence? Both began with Magda noticing something unusual in the ordinary.
The tree series started as Magda became fascinated by the changing bark of a gum tree. As layers peeled away, beautiful colours, abstract patterns, strange faces and unexpected forms appeared. Later, an old weathered fence began revealing its own collection of shapes and intriguing characters.
There is no elaborate editing involved in Magda’s work. All the photographs are taken on her iPhone 15 and are not Photoshopped. “The subjects of my photos are much as my eye and the lens of my camera see them,” she says.
For Magda, that is part of the fun. She remembers loving Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree as a child, with its strange characters and magical worlds, and now jokingly describes her own subject as a Magic Close-Up Tree. Look closely enough, and a patch of bark can become a face, a creature or even an entire landscape.
That idea also inspired her recently self-published children’s book, What Can You See in a Tree? It encourages children, and the adults who care for them, to put down their screens, head outside and see what they can find for themselves.
For Magda, reaching 80 has brought a new freedom to relax into joy. After weathering plenty of challenges throughout her life, she says she can now focus on the things that matter most. Her joie de vivre is obvious, both in her creative work and her sparkling conversation.
“Finding these intriguing things to photograph keeps me young, and the child within can come out and play again. Nobody believes I’m 80. Maybe it could be said I’m 80 going on five!”
That sense of discovery has run through much of Magda’s work. In 2021, her short story Invisible? Never! was highly commended in the My Brother Jack Awards, an affirmation of her attitude to ageing.
With What Can YOU See?, Magda is inviting the rest of us to stop for a moment and look a little more closely too.
The free exhibition is in the entrance foyer of the Mornington Library in Vancouver Street and is open daily during library hours until October 5.
