MOCA GA / Calendar

“I don’t recall when I was first introduced to Hatcher’s Pond but I think I fell in love with it quite quickly as nature has always been an integral part of my being.  At Hatcher’s Pond I realized I was seeing something I hadn’t seen before and I started coming back as often as I could, to see the pond during different seasons, times of day, weather and light conditions. When the first winter season came I got really excited by the many possibilities and started to see more and more patterns and feel the meditative pull.  I tried to keep my mind and eye open to things I didn’t recognize and allow the camera and lens to show me things I hadn’t seen.  I let go of my preconceptions of nature and the rhythms started to flow. Being stuck with what you know often keeps you from seeing what you don’t know. One must use intuition with no premeditation in order for the spontaneity of chance to take over, which is the keystone of my best work.  The landscape of the dead lotus plants opened up chance sightings and invited new discoveries every time I redirected my camera.  I was distracted from the original purpose of the plants and the pond and was simply focused on the abstract images that were being revealed to me.

During my second winter I went when it was 17 degrees.  It was bone cold, the water was frozen and so was I; but I was determined not to think about that and to make new images.  One afternoon Maggie and Bob Hatcher came down to chat with me, and I continued shooting as the light was going fast.  When I looked at the proofs later with artist John Dean, my printer, he said he noticed that I had lost my concentration between this frame and the last frame I took while talking to them.  That made me realize that when I was concentrating I was in a complete meditative state, probably in the same state of mind that the artist Don Cooper is in when he is making his “bindu” circles and gets lost in the process.

In 1940 Mark Rothko stopped painting recognizable images because he wanted to create a new language that did not refer either to myth or reality. He saw memory, history and geometry as obstacles. He started using watercolors hoping the shimmering, pulsating color would project and recede in space creating abstract fields of color for the viewer’s contemplation. I hope that the transparency of my images of the lotus stalks and pods reflecting in the water with earth and sky will give you, the viewer, an emotional jolt.  It’s like plumbing the depths, looking for worlds beneath the surface as the camera shows what the naked eye doesn’t always see.  By printing these images in a very large scale, they take on a calligraphic style of graffiti somewhat reminiscent of American artist Cy Twombly’s large paintings where he was blurring the line between abstract and representational imagery.

I have been photographing all over the world for 40 years and doing unconventional work that began with training from my esteemed teacher Minor White.  I spent many years making exciting and unique images using all kinds of magical techniques in the darkroom.  At some point I realized that it was more difficult and more fun to find actual images that sparked my imagination.  In Hatcher’s Pond the reflections of the stalks and pods, sometimes looking like dancing figures and other times like musical scores, are the culmination of all of my photographic desires in one of the most rich and exciting places.  I think it takes a long time to let go of what you know and allow yourself to probe the unknown until you come up with a whole new vocabulary and new ways of seeing things, something I learned through my residency at the Hambidge Center.

Rothko talked about always wanting to go one step further, so he virtually made the same vertical painting over and over again hoping the light or color fields would be just different enough to make the next one his best. That’s the same impulse that keeps me returning to Hatcher’s Pond. Every time I go there I am experimenting with what nature has left behind.  Each photograph represents a connection to the whole scene with the layers between earth, sky and water. I am not attempting to represent reality.  The creation of these photographs is both meditative and ritualistic as I move around with my camera trying to get in closer and closer to the abstract forms that I find so amazing.

By the end of his life Monet had hardly touched the surface of continuous discovery, and I feel that I have just scratched the surface of this little piece of nature that has been so giving to me.  I get excited every time I go to the pond, and I never dreamt that this work would lead to the opportunity of an exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. The vision was to show linear images, very large and with lots of breathing space in between each one. According to Jeffrey Fraenkel in his latest book, Furthermore, “the essence of photography remains inexplicable and retains an almost voodoo-like element of magic.” The Chinese ancients tell us “Perseverance brings good fortune”.”

-Lucinda Bunnen