Marcus Bunyan Growth 1 – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

October 2013

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled (bandsaw)
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

“What A. feels he is doing, however, as he writes the pages of his own book, is something that does not belong to either one of these two types of memory. A. has both a good memory and a bad memory. He has lost much, but he has also retained much. As he writes, he feels the he is moving inward (through himself) and at the same time moving outward (towards the world). What he experienced, perhaps, during those few moments on Christmas Eve, 1979, as he sat alone in his room on Varick Street, was this: the sudden knowledge that came over him that even alone, in the deepest solitude of his room, he was not alone, or, more precisely, that the moment he began to try to speak of that solitude, he had become more than just himself. Memory, therefore, not simply as the resurrection of one’s private past, but an immersion in the past of others, which is to say: history – which one both participates in and is a witness to, is a part of and apart from. Everything, therefore, is present in his mind at once, as if each element were reflecting the light of all the others, and at the same time emitting its own unique and unquenchable radiance. If there is any reason for him to be in this room now, it is because there is something inside him hungering to see it all at once, to savor the chaos of it in all its raw and urgent simultaneity. And yet, the telling of it is necessarily slow, a delicate business of trying to remember what has already been remembered. The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory. Some things have been lost forever, other things will perhaps be remembered again, and still others have been lost and found and lost again. There is no way to be sure of any of this.”

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Paul Auster. “The Book of Memory,” in The Invention of Solitude, 1982, pp. 148-49

I am scanning my negatives made during the years 1991-1997 to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever. These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people and things that surrounded me.

All images © Marcus Bunyan. Please click the photographs for a larger version of the image. Please remember these are just straight scans of the prints, all full frame, no cropping !

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a vintage 8″ x 10″ silver gelatin print costs $700 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my store web page.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Inversion
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Growth 2
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Starry Night (Burke and Wills memorial)
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled (bandsaw)
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Four ears
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Such is death
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
The wash house
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled (bandsaw)
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
The place where many men have stood
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled (bandsaw)
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Singer
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Ecce homo
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Cluster
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Theoria
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

The Greek theoria (θεωρία), from which the English word “theory” is derived, meant “contemplation, speculation, a looking at, things looked at”, from theorein (θεωρεῖν) “to consider, speculate, look at”, from theoros (θεωρός) “spectator”, from thea (θέα) “a view” + horan (ὁρᾶν) “to see”. It expressed the state of being a spectator. Both Greek θεωρία and Latin contemplatio primarily meant looking at things, whether with the eyes or with the mind.

Taking philosophical and theological traditions into consideration, the term was used by the ancient Greeks to refer to the act of experiencing or observing and then comprehending through consciousness, which is called the nous or “eye of the soul” (Matthew 6:22-34). Insight into being and becoming (called noesis) through the intuitive truth called faith, in God (action through faith and love for God), leads to truth through our contemplative faculties. This theory, or speculation, as action in faith and love for God, is then expressed famously as “Beauty shall Save the World”. This expression comes from a mystical or gnosiological perspective, rather than a scientific, philosophical or cultural one.

Text from Wikipedia website