A peek into a photographer’s personal collections

Bottom line: Though possibly of more interest to Atlanta’s art world cognoscenti, there are epiphanies about art and collecting in this solo show.

Lucinda Bunnen is what you might call the Atlanta art world’s fairy godmother. At age 85, this photographer, collector and arts patron has a long history of supporting the local art scene, donating an impressive 650 photographs to the High Museum of Art and supporting various arts organizations.

A regular fixture at gallery and museum openings and art world parties, it is rare to attend an important art event and not see Bunnen in the mix. Atlanta galleries and museums have often returned the favor with shows devoted to Bunnen’s photography and collections.

The most recent iteration of that pay it forward dimension is a light, fun show focused on Bunnen’s personal collections and quirky sensibility. Called “Lucinda’s World Part II: A Collection of Collections,” this Swan Coach House Gallery show features 27 large color photographs by Bunnen featuring her aggregations of things bought and things found.

In addition to being a photography collector, Bunnen—it turns out—is also a collector of an enormous array of stuff. Coke merchandise, china, vintage locks, pocket knives, pine cones, pewter, stamps, poker chips. Experiences too. Featured in these photographs is everything from her collection of heart-shaped rocks to her impressive vintage wardrobe modeled, somehow fittingly, on drag queen Violet Chachki. The bright, peacocky clothes testify to a time when wardrobes could be colorful, a tad outlandish, and thus perfectly turned out on a drag queen whose persona is dedicated to celebrating the more outsize moments in the feminine lexicon.

These are collections of a life well lived, of walks in the forest which surrounds Bunnen’s Buckhead home to collect pine cones and an active social life documented in fat diaries filled with notes, postcards and mementos. One photo “Detritus From My Walks in Kauai” documents a walk on that Hawaiian island that would do Atlanta artist Pam Longobardi proud. (Longobardi documents the plastic waste polluting beaches and waters around the world). The image records an array of plastic garbage washed up on the beach that Bunnen corrals into a still-life. The image speaks to the laser focus that many artists bring to decoding their physical environment as well as a photographer’s interest in composition. Some of the images are simply fun to look at, like Bunnen’s collection of “Pocket Knives” commemorating everyone from Jimmy Carter to Elvis.

Is Bunnen a hoarder? Far be it for me to judge but enter into the record, “An Old Fridge Full of Cokes and One Pepsi Bottle,” an image that proves Bunnen is most definitely a hometown girl.

Personal collections are often fascinating for what they say about the fixations of their keepers, in organizing the world, and creating mementos of experience. It’s hard not to also see in this exhibition, evidence of a woman considering her time on the planet in the objects that have defined its passage. That contemplative effect gives the show a dose of fragile humanity to cut through the element of hagiography in yet another gallery’s peek into Bunnen’s aesthetic and personality. The one distracting note in an otherwise interesting show are the pedestals stocked with token examples of Bunnen’s actual collections which feel extraneous and a little goofy, as if we needed 3-D examples of the objects documented in the photos.