anti-war images – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Photographs: Marcus Bunyan. ‘Aus der Traum (From the Dream)’ 2023

May 2023

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Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Antonios Schneider
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
Too call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

Raymond Carver. ‘Late Fragment’ from A New Path to the Waterfall, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989

This posting offers a selection of photographs from my new 269 image sequence Aus der Traum (From the Dream) (2023). To see the whole extended conversation please visit my website.

The starting point for this series was a black and white image from towards the end of the Second World War (when the Germans were obviously going to loose) of a German soldier looking at writing that has been scrawled in heavy chalk on the side of an armoured vehicle. ‘Aus der Traum’ translates as ‘From the Dream’.

As the series developed the work, as is its want, took on a life of its own. I use the photographs of war and its effects as part hallucinogenic, technicolour dream and part exploration “… not to follow optically the ‘line of ideas’ in the text or in a picture and see only the representation proper, the surface, but to probe with the eyes the pictorial texture and even to enter the texture.”1

Dr Marcus Bunyan

269 images
© Marcus Bunyan

VIEW THE WHOLE SEQUENCE ON MY WEBSITE (preferably on a desktop computer)

1/ Martin Jay. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkley: University of California Press, 1993, p. 512.

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a digital colour 16″ x 20″ print costs $1,000 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see the Store web page.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Tobacco
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958). 'City (destruction)' 2023

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
City (destruction)
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

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Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Destroyer
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Emanation
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958). 'Flick' 2023

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Flick
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958). 'Goggles' 2023

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Goggles
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

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Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Gun
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Helmet
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

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Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Katyusha
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

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Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Men
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958). 'Prisoner' 2023

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Prisoner
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958). 'Aus der Traum' 2023

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Aus der Traum
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

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Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Trees
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Water
From the series Aus der Traum (From the Dream)
2023
Digital photograph

Marcus Bunyan website

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Photographs: Marcus Bunyan. ‘Too Much of the Air’ 2015

April 2015

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled
2015
Digital photograph
From the series Too Much of the Air

Too Much of the Air

And now for something completely different… after 16 months hard work, I have completed a new 52 image sequence.

Below is a selection of images from the sequence. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

To view the whole sequence please visit my website.

“Imagine being in these planes knowing that you only had moments to live, and knowing that you could do nothing about it. What brought you to that point, what decisions did you take as a human being (or were taken for you) that enacted this scenario.

The “greatness” as the event passes is what is being worked with here. It is the inverse aspect of the sublime. Usually the sublime is regarded as beyond time … but not here. Essentially I am sustaining the last moments of a doomed life, outside of time.

We are unusually privileged to experience the sublime in this way. It is usually a lost aspect through the death of the witness.”

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Note: these images will be printed large to reinforce the disintegration of the image, technology and human being. Tullio Crali‘s painting Before the Parachute Opens (Prima che si apra il paracadute) (1939) was one of a few starting points, inspirations, for the new sequence.

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a digital colour 16″ x 20″ costs $1000 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.

Beginning of the sequence

End of the sequence

Marcus Bunyan website

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Photographs: Marcus Bunyan. ‘There But For The Grace of You Go I’ 2009

December 2009

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from the series There But For The Grace of You Go I
2009
Digital colour photograph

There But For The Grace of You Go I

A body of work, There But For The Grace of You Go I (2009) is now online on my website.

There are twenty images in the series which can be viewed as a sequence, rising and falling like a piece of music. Below are a selection of images from the series. The work continues an exploration into the choices human beings make. The silhouettes and landscapes of planes are taken from found copyright free images; the people from my photographs captured as they crossed the intersection outside Flinders Street Station, Melbourne. Other images are paintings from the Renaissance and POW’s during World War II.

I have always been creative from a very early age, starting as a child prodigy playing the piano at the age of five and going on to get my degree as a concert pianist at the Royal College of Music in London. I have always felt the music and being creative has helped me cope with life, living with bipolar.

These days as I reach my early 50’s ego is much less a concern – about being successful, about having exhibitions. I just make the work because I love making it and the process gives me happiness – in the thinking, in the making. I can loose myself in my work.

When Andrew Denton asked Clive James what brings him joy, James replies “The arts,“ and then qualified his answer. “What I mean is creativity. When I get lost in something that’s been made, it doesn’t matter who it is by. It could be Marvin Gaye singing ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’ or it could be the adagio of the Ninth Symphony …”

What a wise man.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.