Biography

Russell C. Banks (b. 1951) is an American artist who is drawn to the quirks and ironies of life, the ambiguous moments, and how we pursue our fantasies and pleasures. He looks for scenes that invite viewers to wonder and perhaps imagine a story as they absorb the details. Coming from a documentary tradition, he believes the real world can furnish material far more compelling and credible than anything he could make up on his own. Inspired by both the great street photographers (Winogrand, Friedlander) and the masters of precise, large-format work (Strand, Weston), in his images the carefully composed structures and details surrounding the people are much more than “background”—they’re vital characters in the narrative.

He earned a photojournalism degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 1974, then moved to El Paso to work at the university’s El Paso campus news bureau. Outside of work, he often carried a 4x5 field camera into the deserts and mountains of the Southwest, and brought that large-format sensibility to his Infant Series project, shot in 35mm and published in the second edition of the Time-Life Library of Photography book, “Photographing Children.”

During those years, Banks had work in solo shows at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver, Salt Lake Art Center in Utah, Abilene Fine Arts Museum in Texas, Fox Fine Arts Gallery in El Paso, and the Portland Community College Northview Gallery in Oregon. His work was included in juried exhibitions at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Palm Beach Junior College, Amarillo Art Center, Boston Visual Artists’ Union, Austin Photographic Cooperative Society, Northlight Southwest Exhibition at Arizona State University, St. Edward’s University (Texas), Allen Street Gallery in Dallas, and the Armory Museum Festival Show in Santa Fe.

Today, most of his attention goes to the Floating World project, where he explores the the fantasy world of giant cruise ships. Recently, his work has been accepted for juried exhibitions at the Fitchburg Museum of Art in Massachusetts; PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont; Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver; the SE Center for Photography in Greenville, South Carolina; A. Smith Gallery in Johnson City, Texas; Texas Photographic Society; Emerald Art Center in Springfield, Oregon; Marin Society of Artists, California; and Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, New York.

In October 2020, he was the featured artist in F-STOP Magazine’s “Documentary 2020” edition, and in March 2022, he was selected as one of 30 artists in the "30 Over 50" exhibition at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado. In summer 2022, the project was featured in Float Photo Magazine. In April, 2023, his work was selected by David Campany for the Der Greif Guest Room (Munich).