Lucinda Bunnen: Celebrated Atlanta photographer, collector, philanthropist (1930-2022)

Lucinda Weil Bunnen, godmother of Southern photography, died on Sunday at the age of 92. A memorial will be held Saturday, April 2, at 11 a.m. at Atlanta Contemporary.

Over her extensive career, Bunnen spanned the roles of collector, philanthropist and artist. In the early 1970s, she became one of the nation’s first collectors of fine-art photography and developed lifelong relationships with major photographers.

Bunnen was a dedicated philanthropist for much of her life. Starting in the 1970s, she collected hundreds of photographs that would eventually be donated to the High Museum as the The Bunnen Collection of Photography. 

Another organization that benefited from Bunnen’s philanthropy is Hambidge Center, an artist residency in North Georgia. With Bunnen’s help, Hambidge was able to complete many needed renovations to its historic property, helping it to become a well-known destination for artists seeking a retreat to do their work in a beautiful natural environment.

What sets her apart from most major philanthropists of the arts is that she herself became a photographer and had an art practice that spanned five decades. Bunnen’s influence in the arts reaches further than Atlanta, as she established herself as a world-class figure in photography.

Bunnen was born Lucinda Weil in 1930 in Katonah, New York. Her grandfather, Aaron E. Norman, bought out Roebuck, of Sears and Roebuck, establishing her family’s fortune. Although her family has had philanthropic interests for generations (Bunnen was part of the Norman Foundation, a family foundation that supports social and environmental justice), she did not come from an artistic background.

In 1952, Lucinda Weil married the late Robert Bunnen, an Atlanta-based oral surgeon. Together they had three children — Robb, Belinda and Melissa. It wasn’t until 1970, at the age of 40, that Bunnen discovered her creative voice.

At that time, Bunnen had a budding friendship with Tullio Petrucci, a professor at Atlanta College of Art. He inspired her to take a movie camera with her on a family vacation to Peru for her 40th birthday. Bunnen cited this movie as her first artwork, and it was shown as part of The Bunnen Collection at The High Museum in 2014. Soon after returning home, Bunnen enrolled in the first photo classes offered at Atlanta College of Art, which quickly propelled her into an art career.

Encouraged by Petrucci, Bunnen began to “make” (she always used this word instead of “take”) photos everywhere she went. Some of her earliest work includes “Nuns on a Beach” and images of storefronts in the then-hippie haven of midtown Atlanta. In 1971, Bunnen had her first solo show at Saks Fifth Avenue in Atlanta, which drew the attention of the late Gudmund Vigtel, then director of the High Museum.

Vigtel invited Bunnen to participate in the Georgia Artists Show at the High, even though she had less than a year of experience as a photographer. This early success led her to participate in shows across Georgia and around the country as an emerging artist. In the first decade of her career, Bunnen studied under fine art photographers such Minor White, Duane Michals and Linda Connor.

In 1973, Bunnen helped co-found Nexus along with several other Atlanta photographers. Originally intended as a member-funded cooperative gallery and storefront, Nexus eventually grew into the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. At the time, photography was not yet considered a fine art, and Nexus sought to change that. Its keynote program, Nexus Press, printed exquisite artist books highlighting photography as an emerging art form on a par with painting and sculpture.

In 1978, Bunnen published her first book, Movers and Shakers in Georgia. It profiled the powerful and elite in the New South, with an eye towards shedding outdated notions of the South as a decrepit, slow-moving place. Bunnen contributed her photography for the book, and included pictures of Ted Turner, the Carter family and Coretta Scott King. Her collaborator, Frankie Coxe, provided the text and helped connect Bunnen with many of the subjects.

Soon after, Bunnen continued her streak of creative collaborations by partnering with the late photographer and art critic Virginia Warren Smith. Together they followed their hearts and traveled the country in a VW van, taking pictures of offbeat scenes the duo fell in love with. They produced two books — Scoring In Heaven: Gravestones and Cemetery Art of the American Sunbelt States and Alaska: Trail Tales and Eccentric Detours.

Most recently, Bunnen funded the creation of a gallery dedicated to photography at The High. Kicking off this investment was the show The Bunnen Collection, which featured works from the more than 650 pieces she had collected and donated to the museum. Among these are a complete set of images of The Brown Sisters, an annual photo portrait created by Nicholas Nixon of the women in his family. Also included in The Bunnen Collection are works by such esteemed artists as Nan Goldin, Chuck Close, William Eggleston and Edward Weston.

In the last years of her life, Bunnen produced three bodies of work entitled Lucinda’s World that delved into decades of her photographic experimentation. The first installment, at Mason Murer Gallery (now Mason Fine Art), was an immersive photo installation meant to evoke the experience of being inside her home. (Disclaimer: The writer of this remembrance curated that show and is an occasional ArtsATL contributor).

The second installment, A Collection of Collections, presented large-scale photos of Bunnen’s lifelong passion for collecting. Items ranged from heart-shaped stones, Coca-Cola memorabilia and vintage cameras; the items were displayed alongside the photos. The third installment, Weathered Chromes at Marcia Wood Gallery, presented enlargements of decayed slides from Bunnen’s archives.

In 2020, Switch Modern presented the retrospective From Nuns to Now: A Photographer’s Selections  and in 2021 Atlanta Contemporary presented an exhibit of her work titled Inward, Outward, Forward.

Bunnen’s work is in numerous public collections in addition to the High, among them the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Pushkin Museum in Moscow, The Smithsonian, The Mint Museum in Charlotte, the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. and MOCA GA.

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