Zen Peacemakers
Peter "kuku-sama" Cunningham
PETER CUNNINGHAM recently returned from China where he is teaching Chinese photographers and completing his STILL FILM entitled Cultural Evolution. This might seem a long journey from his first paid job as a photographer in 1973, when, for $25 he made Bruce Springsteen's first pictures at Columbia Records and later did the same for Madonna. Peter learned to be a professional photographer creating images for famous performers in music and theater, he did this for 15 years (portfolio) until the birth of MTV made the field less interesting.
At the same time he learned to remain a passionate amateur from photographer Adger Cowens who taught about seeing not objects in one's camera, but perceiving objects as the light that is bouncing off them, mixing it with your feelings and history and mythology, and and responding from your gut. Peter also learned from Henri Cartier-Bresson who he was privildged to assist in 1975. The two traveled every day for a month to New Jersey to document what HCB considered the prototypical American state. My job was to talk to everyone so Henri could concentrate on seeing. The New York Times gave Henri it's lead op-ed space on the day Bill Moyers aired the show.
Also in 1980, Peter began studies with Bernie Glassman at the Zen Community of New York. His first public exhibitiion, "THIS IS IT? was held in the cafe sponsored by ZCNY; that little cafe evolved into The Greyston Bakery famous for cakes and cookies and for revivifying people with difficult histories. Peter's travels and friendships among Zen practitioners and teachers in Japan, Europe, The Middle East, and The United States have been a great blessing and influence on his life and work. His trip to Japan with Bernie and Peter Matthiessen to visit the ancestors of Bernie's teacher, Maezumi Roshi, resulted in the publicaton of "Nine-Headed Dragon River"; Peter has helped document the migration of Zen Buddhist practice from Japan to the West. After Maezumi Roshi's death in 1995 the practice, while retaining it's traditional form in many places, also evolved into new American/European forms. Bernie Glassman took his students into the streets or to sit meditation in Auschwitz-Birkenau and has now created The Peacemaker Community; Genpo Roshi started his Big Mind form of teaching, and throughout the West; many of the best teachers of the next genereation are women, a development that would have been inconceivable in Japan.
'In about 1980 cable tv was being launched and I was asked by an ad agency to create a series of 20 posters of people (my friends) which were displayed on the NYC subways in all 5 boroughs. I took the opportunity to take make a second more personal portrait of my models posed next to the purposeful commercial image on the postere. This series became the Black&White portion of Peter's first major exhibition in 1982 at Harkness House curated by Liz Thompson and Kathy DeShaw.
The other half of this 1982 exhibition framed color prints in combinations, and thus began the long evolution of the theatrically-scaled triptych medium Peter calls "StillFilm". Peter has exhibited still films around the world; in 2005 he showed the Still Films in Krakow, London, Paris, and Berlin. ..... the web version he calls "StillTV".
In 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, Peter, based in New York City,began creating a Still Film he calls BLINDERS. I wondered what would replace the authoritarian structures that had ruled in the East, what systems are in place in the West that keep people well behaved and going to work day after day."
Peter continued this general theme in Berlin in 1994 with his still film WÄNDE WENDE (Walls Change) Previewing the still film's debut at The Knitting Factory, The New Yorker says about Cunningham, "These visual poems are decidedly more ambitious than his celebrity work; in the past they've consisted of essays on nature and consumerism. He shot his latest still film in Berlin, and it addresses, in a stunningly colorful fashion, how the walls that hem us in are not necessarily made of concrete."
Peter's current work in China, Cultural Revolution is based on a similar idea, that images have a kind of persuasive power was once wielded by guns. Peter imagines presenting these three shows together in their home cities: New York, Berlin, and Beijing:
Peter "kuku-sama" Cunningham
PETER CUNNINGHAM recently returned from China where he is teaching Chinese photographers and completing his STILL FILM entitled Cultural Evolution. This might seem a long journey from his first paid job as a photographer in 1973, when, for $25 he made Bruce Springsteen's first pictures at Columbia Records and later did the same for Madonna. Peter learned to be a professional photographer creating images for famous performers in music and theater, he did this for 15 years (portfolio) until the birth of MTV made the field less interesting.
At the same time he learned to remain a passionate amateur from photographer Adger Cowens who taught about seeing not objects in one's camera, but perceiving objects as the light that is bouncing off them, mixing it with your feelings and history and mythology, and and responding from your gut. Peter also learned from Henri Cartier-Bresson who he was privildged to assist in 1975. The two traveled every day for a month to New Jersey to document what HCB considered the prototypical American state. My job was to talk to everyone so Henri could concentrate on seeing. The New York Times gave Henri it's lead op-ed space on the day Bill Moyers aired the show.
Also in 1980, Peter began studies with Bernie Glassman at the Zen Community of New York. His first public exhibitiion, "THIS IS IT? was held in the cafe sponsored by ZCNY; that little cafe evolved into The Greyston Bakery famous for cakes and cookies and for revivifying people with difficult histories. Peter's travels and friendships among Zen practitioners and teachers in Japan, Europe, The Middle East, and The United States have been a great blessing and influence on his life and work. His trip to Japan with Bernie and Peter Matthiessen to visit the ancestors of Bernie's teacher, Maezumi Roshi, resulted in the publicaton of "Nine-Headed Dragon River"; Peter has helped document the migration of Zen Buddhist practice from Japan to the West. After Maezumi Roshi's death in 1995 the practice, while retaining it's traditional form in many places, also evolved into new American/European forms. Bernie Glassman took his students into the streets or to sit meditation in Auschwitz-Birkenau and has now created The Peacemaker Community; Genpo Roshi started his Big Mind form of teaching, and throughout the West; many of the best teachers of the next genereation are women, a development that would have been inconceivable in Japan.
'In about 1980 cable tv was being launched and I was asked by an ad agency to create a series of 20 posters of people (my friends) which were displayed on the NYC subways in all 5 boroughs. I took the opportunity to take make a second more personal portrait of my models posed next to the purposeful commercial image on the postere. This series became the Black&White portion of Peter's first major exhibition in 1982 at Harkness House curated by Liz Thompson and Kathy DeShaw.
The other half of this 1982 exhibition framed color prints in combinations, and thus began the long evolution of the theatrically-scaled triptych medium Peter calls "StillFilm". Peter has exhibited still films around the world; in 2005 he showed the Still Films in Krakow, London, Paris, and Berlin. ..... the web version he calls "StillTV".
In 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, Peter, based in New York City,began creating a Still Film he calls BLINDERS. I wondered what would replace the authoritarian structures that had ruled in the East, what systems are in place in the West that keep people well behaved and going to work day after day."
Peter continued this general theme in Berlin in 1994 with his still film WÄNDE WENDE (Walls Change) Previewing the still film's debut at The Knitting Factory, The New Yorker says about Cunningham, "These visual poems are decidedly more ambitious than his celebrity work; in the past they've consisted of essays on nature and consumerism. He shot his latest still film in Berlin, and it addresses, in a stunningly colorful fashion, how the walls that hem us in are not necessarily made of concrete."
Peter's current work in China, Cultural Revolution is based on a similar idea, that images have a kind of persuasive power was once wielded by guns. Peter imagines presenting these three shows together in their home cities: New York, Berlin, and Beijing: