Magdalena the Storyteller

Soon after I moved to the Monterey Peninsula I was wandering the artist’s booths at the funky annual street fair in Sand City called West End. I was immediately drawn to Magdalena’s images and soon began collecting her work. I continued to follow the evolution of her art form and later was reunited when I asked her to shoot my profile for my website, As we were wandering the Adobe’s of Monterey looking for the perfect backdrop for our shoot Magdalena began to tell me about her life and how she became drawn to photography.

She was born into an artistic family, her mother a graphic artist and her grandfather an offset printer from Bavaria Germany. At his shop he would meticulously set-up every letter, her mom at a young age working by his side in the print shop. Magdalena knew early on that she was drawn to photography and it would be her life’s work, she was 16. She attained her degree at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, returning to Pacific Grove, where she grew up, to explore her art further. Over the next 14 years she developed a successful community based commercial photography business. Showing nationally and teaching workshops with Kim Weston, Edward Weston’s grand son and taking on apprenticeships with photographers in the area including Ryuijie, who shows at the Weston Gallery.

For Magdalena her photography is about using her tools that aid her in telling the story of an experience. When she first started taking photographs and experimenting with the medium she tells me she had just gotten her drivers license, wanting to take long drives she would head to Big Sur. Once there it would be a day long adventure in nature with a spirit of exploration and a search for beauty “I always feel so beautiful when I go into nature” she says. She would drive, explore, find special spots and later return to document her treasure with her camera.

“I would spend hours and hours in nature, my distractibility is with beauty.” On many of her excursions Magdalena would get to know a particularly interesting tree, remembering the tree she would return to it again and again exploring it’s beauty, spirit, and life. A beloved tree is where she mourned her grandfather who had passed away, just as her own life was blossoming…it had been a crazy rich time for her, her last year of school, work was going so well but part of her life was ending. She would drive to clear her head and found a beautiful Oak tree with a blanket of spring grass surrounding the mighty trunk, she would lay under the tree for hours, contemplate life, ask questions.

A big part of her process is the hunt, hunting for beautiful things. She explores on her own and when she has found the spot that resonates with her she returns with a model and uses her tools to capture the essence of the moment. Her love of nature is so evident in her art. Her earlier work was an exploration of the expression of the human form and the landscape, illustrating how it would feel to be in unity with the desert, ocean, or woods.

She has evolved and changed as an artist, wanting to be respectful to women and support their rights she no longer wanted her models, who are her friends and sacred collaborators, to pose nude. She began to ask herself how she could tell the same story in a considered and thoughtful way. This began a journey and resurgence of her love of theatre and fashion. Enjoying the exploration of wardrobes she muses how a model clothed can be even more romantic and enticing than a nude. “The romantic stage of any relationship is the most juicy and there is a longing, a desire even, to hang onto it” She is enjoying playing dress-up and treasure hunting in new locations.

Enthusiastic for what is to come she lights up with a sense of expectancy when she talks about her new work. A friend, a jazz musician, asked her to photograph her new album cover. A chance meeting through a postcard taken from a show of Magdalena’s work at the Institute of International Studies. Magdalena shows me the images for the cover, she and her friend look so alike they could be sisters! The backdrop, a rail car located in the Santa Cruz mountains, the image exudes passion and intrigue. She mentions “there is a certain Celtic feel of big trees, rocks, and shapes in this new location, which will only get better, the moss even greener after the Spring rains”. She lives with expectancy of what is around the corner.

For Magdalena photography is about expression. Film has a realism, a historical resonance- a special quality of artifacts. Her prints are museum quality, silver gelatin prints, platinum prints, digital archival print. Processing the film, shaking up the chemicals, observing the chemical reaction is like therapy for her. I ask her “Are you surprised at how the print turns out?” “At certain times you have a goal in mind or resonance you want to create. Other times, especially with a series, you can have so many variables, surprises are welcome.” She cites Digital as a valid but different art form, she works in both mediums.

Magdalena also produces Bohypsian ~Spirit of the human soul~

An annual subscription magazine, Bohypsian, really more of a journal than a magazine that tells the stories of the human soul, the spirit, documenting Magdalena’s journeys where she follows her heart and her chance encounters that come along the way. It is a formidable task to produce such a beautiful epic documentation of the human spirit and experience. Also “an expensive and scary enterprise...like buying a car!”. Her first edition was fully funded. Magdalena recalls the magical night of the launch party attended by 70 supporting community members on a full moon…it was perfect!

Her goal with Bohypsian is to provide images that are not in the galleries that represent her work, making her images more accessible. Each page of the journal will lay flat and can be cleanly torn out and framed, thanks to the genius of her invention and proprietary binding process. Magdalena suggests Bohypsian cross breeds activism and art. “There is so much charge in our environment. We are over stimulated and need refuge...it is about the home environment we create, food that we eat, the way that we live to be in harmony with ourselves and our environment.”

It has been a pleasure to get to know the eye behind the camera.