anti-war – 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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In conversation: Marcus Bunyan and Elizabeth Gertsakis discuss his new work, ‘The Shape of Dreams’ 2013-2017

December 2017

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from the series The Shape of Dreams
2013-2017
Silver gelatin print
© Marcus Bunyan

In conversation

EG: Just saw your most recent Art Blart and your work. It’s very beautiful. Congratulations. At first I didn’t know whose they were. Then I went through them one by one, and only after responding to them ‘unknown’ I saw it was your work. SO BEAUTIFUL, so potent and yet, within the ambivalence and questioning there was space for great stillness and contemplation. Powerful and so poetic. The one of the children, close up is dazzling, but so are the open fields, mountains, roadways and minute images of flight.

MB: Thank you so much Elizabeth. Yes, my work would you believe. I can now believe after 4 years hard work. A poem to the uncertainty of human dreams. It’s a conceptual series in the vein of my hero Minor White – contemplative, poetic as always with me, but with an edge under the poetry as you so correctly observe EG – you are caught in the dream in the end image, suspended in time and space, in your imagination. You are always so spot on with your observations.

EG: Your own tendency is also closely linked to language and ideas?

MB: This is very true. The basis for all my work is body, time, space, environment and their link to language and ideas… and how conceptual work can be spiritual as well.

EG: I’m with you on that one, and political as well.

MB: Indeed – all my work, including this series, is very anti-war.

EG: What is unseen, invisible in these images is definitely the dark quiet hole of hell that war is. Or at least those that invest in it.

MB: The key image in this regard is the one of the explosion.

EG: But the ones of the distant and misdirected aerial machines also…

MB: Indeed, and the second one, where all the men are looking away while the cloud expands in the background.

EG: Yes, the casual indifference and banality of it.

MB: You have it perfectly Elizabeth!

EG: But the children, oh those children, and the innocent implacability of the natural world.

MB: To find these images on Ebay and then spend four years of my life cleaning and saving them was an incredible experience. It was almost like I was breathing these images as I was saving them, looking into each one and being immersed in them. Thus, the art demands contemplation from the viewer in order to begin to understand its resonances.

Many thankx to Elizabeth Gertsakis for her wisdom, knowledge, friendship and advice throughout the year. These observations of my work mean a great deal to me.

See the full sequence including the spacing of images (enlarge and use scroll bar)

See the full images on my website

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.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from the series The Shape of Dreams
2013-2017
Silver gelatin print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan website

LILKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

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Photographs: Marcus Bunyan. ‘The Shape of Dreams’ 2013-2017

December 2017

CLICK ON AND ENLARGE THE IMAGES BELOW AND USE THE SCROLL BAR TO SEE THE FULL SEQUENCE AND SPACING OF THE IMAGES

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
The Shape of Dreams (detail of sequence)
2013-2017
Digital photographs
42 images in the series
© Marcus Bunyan

The form of formlessness
The shape of dreams

The Shape of Dreams

A Christmas present to myself… my most complex and enigmatic sequence to date.

Shot in Japan, all of the images come from two 1950s photography albums, one of which has a large drawing of a USAF bomber on it’s cover. The images were almost lost they were so dirty, scratched and deteriorated. It has taken me four long years to scan, digitally clean and restore the images, heightening the colour already present in the original photographs.

Sometimes the work flowed, sometimes it was like pulling teeth. Many times I nearly gave up, asking myself why I was spending my life cleaning dirt and scratches from these images. The only answer is… that I wanted to use these images so that they told a different story.

Then to sequence the work in such a way that there is an enigmatic quality, a mystery in that narrative journey. Part auteur, part cinema – a poem to the uncertainty of human dreams.

Marcus

Please go to my website to see the larger images