Rhonda Bunyan Photography

Blurring the lines of reality and impermanence

RHONDA BUNYAN PHOTOGRAPHY

My inspiration springs from fascinating glimpses of the now, where people, objects, shades of light and dark come together in a moment never to be repeated. I focus on the spiritual cognisance of the impermanence of all things.

I produce large black and white photographs capturing everyday life in a way that is dynamic, interesting, sometimes challenging, and at times ironic and humorous.

Without colour there is greater emphasis on form; gradients of light and dark interact with each other; sometimes playing with one another, sometimes sparring. From an artistic viewpoint, colour depicts reality; black and white is an interpretation of reality.

My subjects are an eclectic mix of no one specific genre, though my eye is always drawn to subjects that embrace the mundanity of everyday existence. I am attracted to gritty cityscapes, and am fascinated by the manners in which humans define their sense of self. The moment in time that is captured is the culmination of all their moments on Earth; location, clothes, props, attitude, stature, expression, mannerisms.

My eye is scanning continuously, looking for images from within the ordinary, by giving them time, place and context it delivers them to the 'meaningful'.

Taranaki National Art Awards 2019 Winner Fred & Eunice Rodie Charitable Trust Photography Award

Ladies Rest Room, New Plymouth

JUDGES' COMMENT:

This is a fascinating photograph that draws on all of the conventions
of traditional black & white photography combined with an excellent
eye and attention to detail. The first thing that draws the viewer in is
the clever use of composition. The three women pictured are each
going about their reading oblivious of each other or the camera. The
symmetry of the windows and the reflection of one of the subjects in
the adjacent mirror create balance and the evocative use of lighting
adds both a sense of drama and a familiarity that borders on
nostalgia. In the wake of #metoo, this photograph offers an
alternative to the social media outcry, it is a safe space for
contemplation, a place of rest – promising both peace and quiet.

Taranaki National Art Awards Sinclair Electrical & Refrigeration + Michael & Margaret Holmes Photography Award - HC

NO ROOM FOR RACISM 2020

JUDGES' COMMENTS

Capturing a moment in time used to be something only owners of cameras could do. Since the invention of the camera on a mobile phone, photography is everybody’s. This work, however, shows the difference between merely capturing beauty and making art.
This is art because: the artist has found the image, stumbled across it and noticed the ‘artness’ of it as a composition, but also as a political statement. The black and white photograph echoes the sentiment of the posters - No Room for Racism Here, White Supremacy is Terrorism.
It is amplified as a subject because it is a burnt-out shell of a building, so nobody resides there. The subject of racism is black and white, in a physical sense and in a literal sense.

'I have been tusked by an elephant, almost eaten by a sperm whale, knocked off my feet by a rhinoceros, embraced by a jaguar, given a haircut by a tiger shark, chased by a hippo and a black mamba, brought to my knees by malaria and Dengue… but I was able to avoid the greatest danger of all. Never stop exploring the things that open you, or that you love.'

-Gregory Colbert

ALL PHOTOS BY RHONDA BUNYAN PHOTOGRAPHY AND ARE SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT

'I think it’s because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Color is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn’t necessarily reach the heart.'

– Kim Hunter

'I didn’t choose photography, photography chose me.'

-Gerardo Suter

'With black and white photography, what you have to say counts more than the way you say it.'

– Gian Marco Maran

'I love this life. I feel like I am always catching my breath and saying, 'Oh! Will you look at that?' Photography has been my way of bearing witness to the joy I find in seeing the extraordinary in ordinary life. You don't look for pictures. Your pictures are looking for you.'

-Harold Feinstein

'Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretive.'

– Eliott Erwitt

'It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.'

— Henri Cartier-Bresson

'Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.'

— Peter Adams

'A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.'

― Albert Einstein

'Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.'

- Edward Steichen

'All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.'

― Susan Sontag