DAVID R BANTA

Born in Muskegon, Michigan in 1952,  David R Banta began painting & drawing as a child.  At sixteen with a high school art teacher’s encouragement, David purchased an East German Praktica SLR camera.  His photographic ambitions were fueled by his father Harold Banta’s passion for black & white Polaroid albums and by magazine photo essays in Life Magazine.  David acquired a degree in Arts and Media from William James College in 1974.  He met with legendary experimental photographer Arthur Siegel in Chicago. Upon reviewing David’s portfolio, Siegel said humorously, “I don’t believe in photography as therapy.”  Siegel nonetheless accepted David as a student at the Illinois Institute of Technology: Institute of Design in 1979 in Chicago. Prior to Banta’s arrival Siegel had died, so David studied under black & white photographer David Plowden and color dye transfer photographer, David Rathbun, an apprentice to Elliot Porter.

Banta left Chicago to settle in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  There he worked as a color photo dye transfer lab technician.  Eventually he became a weekly newspaper writer and photographer.  He was a member of the National Press Photographers Association. David began working as a corporate hospital photographer for ten years. During that period he joined the American Society of Magazine Photographers and studied under Magnum photographer Alex Webb at Maine Photographic Workshops.

David moved into commercial photography shooting for annual reports, business publications and pursued magazine work. Disillusioned by three years of commercial work, Banta left professional photography behind to pursue his own vision.  He has  at Venice Biennale Project in Venice, Italy four times.

Banta has been  in the “Sunday In America” book, “inSomnia Photography Magazine”, a Ukrainian publication, and published an eight-page spread in “EYE Photo Magazine”, an Austrian-based international photography magazine.  David’s most recent photo work: “Adventures In Amerika: Searching The Borderlands” ((2021–Self-published on Blurb.com). His most recent published work (2023) is a monograph in “The Street Photographer Notebook” magazine by editor/photographer Alex Coghe in Mexico City.