Photographer made name as artist, collector, philanthropist

She helped establish High Museum of Art’s photography gallery.

In late 2014, Lucinda Bunnen, clad in jeans and a sunny yellow shirt, scooted around the Mason Murer Fine Art gallery in white socks. She smiled as she approached her photo of a Cuban woman’s creased and weathered face under a bright red hair bow, a cigar clinched in one hand.

Bunnen, then 85, had sold more copies of this photograph than any other image. The woman is relatively well-known in Cuba; she often poses for tourists. But others couldn’t match what Bunnen caught in that singular, candid moment.

“I saw her and snapped the picture,” Bunnen said. “And it was that second ... when she was not posing.”

Bunnen, 92, born in New York on Jan 14, 1930, died Sunday night, according to family.

Over the decades, Bunnen captured a large and diverse array of images including landscapes — mainly trees — surreal compositions, portraits, building facades and scenes from her travels. They were collected by museums, and she published books of them.

Bunnen also was a collector and philanthropist. Her collection included well-known photographers such as Ansel Adams. She was celebrated in a 2013 exhibition drawn from more than four decades of her giving to the High Museum of Art. Bunnen donated more than 1,000 photos from her collection and established the museum’s first dedicated photography gallery.

“She’s really a remarkable woman in the way that she’s worn several hats and done it very gracefully,” said former High photography curator Brett Abbott. “She identifies as an artist, but she’s also been an incredibly important philanthropist, a visionary collector and a supporter of other artists’ work. … She was not just making photographs but collecting photographs and supporting the photographers and supporting museum photography at a time when photography was not well collected or well understood within the musuem context.”

Bunnen’s affinity for photography developed during a family trip to Peru in late 1969. She was turning 40 and didn’t want to celebrate with a party, but instead made plans to usher in the next decade with a family trip to remote areas of South America.

She made a silent Super-8 movie of the trip, capturing images of natives who had never seen outsiders. After returning home, she signed up for the first photography class offered at Atlanta College of Art in 1970 and quickly established herself as a highly unconventional artist, seeing and capturing images others missed.

“Some people decide they will photograph abandoned buildings in New York City, and that’s what they do for two years,” Bunnen said. “But I am open-minded. I am not looking for anything in particular. I am just looking.”

Bunnen tried to seize the decisive moment — clouds seeming to replicate cotton balls in a field, a cow standing perfectly still near the banks of the Ganges River. She also created unique artistry by manipulating images. In one instance, she discovered a handful of slides damaged by heat and moisture, and the swirling patterns in the images gave her an idea. She left hundreds of unwanted slides out on her deck for nature to alter. After a few weeks, water, heat and time had created rich psychedelic patterns, leaving only small clues as to the original images.

Bunnen is survived by three children — Robert L. Bunnen Jr. of Atlanta and Maryland, Belinda Bunnen Reusch and Melissa Bunnen Jernigan — as well as eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Lucinda Bunnen