David R Banta

Head Gear

As I was looking at the common threads through my work, I discovered that what people were wearing on their heads was an unconscious motivation in my inclination to photograph them. Head gear...it's a part of who we are. All Photos © David R Banta

Photographer

David R Banta

Born in Muskegon, Michigan, David R Banta began his artwork as a child with painting & drawing, and then moved into photography at sixteen with an East German Practika camera given to him by his high school art teacher. Drawn to photography and fueled by his father Harold’s passion for Polaroid albums, Life Magazine and National Geographic, David acquired a degree in Arts and Media from William James College in 1974. After 5 years in the working world, he met with legendary experimental photographer Arthur Siegel in Chicago. Upon reviewing David's portfolio, Siegel said "I don't believe in photography as therapy", but nonetheless accepted David as a student at the Illinois Institute of Technology: Institute of Design in 1979 in Chicago. There David studied under black & white photographer David Plowden and an assistant to American nature photographer Eliot Porter, David Rathbun.

Banta left Chicago, returning to Michigan. In Grand Rapids, he worked as a color dye transfer lab technician, then became a weekly newspaper writer and photographer, eventually taking a position as chief photographer for five years. He was a member of the NPPA (National Press Photographers Association). From there, Banta began working as a corporate hospital photographer for ten years. He became an ASMP member (American Society of Magazine Photographers). During that period he studied under Magnum photographer Alex Webb at Maine Photographic Workshops. David moved into the commercial photography realm, shooting annual reports, for business publications and editorial work. Disillusioned by three years of commercial work, Banta left 18 years of professional photography behind. He now pursues his personal photographic vision.

He has exhibited in Venice ArtBiennale 3 times. Also in Corsica, France; Athens, Greece; Venice, Italy; Yerevan, Armenia, Boston, Massachusetts, and Charlevoix and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Banta has been published in the “Sunday In America” book, "inSomnia Photography Magazine", a Ukrainian publication, and an 8-page spread in "EYE Photo Magazine", an Austrian-based international photography magazine.

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