WHAT I DO
About Suzanne Banning
Banning's award-winning work is very experimental. She does predominantly self-portraits in which she impersonates someone else; like in the "La Belle Dame Sans Merci” series, the "Pele, Goddess of the Volcano” series, the “Lolita” series, the “Dahpne” series and her “Aurora, Goddess of Dawn” series and most recently her “Abduction of Europa” series. Among other things, she explores the unlimited possibilities of using her camera in combination with movement. A crucial element in her process is her habit of fueling herself by listening to her favorite music (Tori Amos, Björk, Alanis Morissette among others) while shooting pictures. She dances, sings and bathes herself in waves of sound that take her to her creative source. Or as noted art critic and Professor of Art History W. Jackson Rushing III states in an essay about Banning’s work: “…she distills and presents to her audience what another Dutch artist, Willem De Kooning, called “frozen glimpses” of singular moments where cognition and pure sensation commingle and the self sings its private, unfettered song of desire.”
Banning's work has been featured in many exhibitions in the USA, Peru, China, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Syria, Oman and Germany. Jurors and curators who have selected her photos for exhibitions include: Dan Cameron, Andrea Karnes, Gus & Sharon Kopriva, Dominic Molon, Marysol Nieves (who awarded her First Prize in a national exhibition.), James Rondeau and Clint Willour. Bannings work is in the permanent collection of the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi.