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David’s Bio
I don’t remember when I first picked up a camera; the first picture I remember taking, though, was when I was in the sixth grade. It was with a little Kodak Instamatic 104; I stood at the base of a large tree, leaned back and pointed the camera straight up, photographing the pattern of the limbs branching out from the trunk. I’ve spent the years since then pointing my camera at the things that interest me, and trying to see those things from a different point of view.

With both engineers and artists in my family, the camera was a natural outlet for me. I’ve always had a curiosity about how things work, and why, and the process of photography has been endlessly intriguing to me. But as I’ve grown as a photographer, I’ve come to know it as not just as tool to see and record the world, but to comprehend and interpret it, and to help others appreciate it.

I earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Photography from Ohio University and worked as a photojournalist at daily newspapers in Philadelphia. I’ve worked as a corporate-industrial photographer for ARMCO, Inc., a Fortune 50 corporation based in Middletown, OH, and Corestates, Inc., a regional bank in Philadelphia. And I’ve owned and operated Fonda Photographic for over 25 years, providing high-end corporate and industrial photography for regional, national, and international clients.

While my business has required that I point my camera at many decidedly ‘commercial’ subjects, I’ve tried to always see them with an artistic eye. It’s what’s kept me at it through the years. I get a tremendous variety in my work that makes it endlessly interesting. I’ve been in countless factories and seen how many of the things we use in our daily lives are made. I’ve been in corporate boardrooms and Main Line mansions. I’ve photographed industrial labs, university research facilities, on oil rigs and in refineries. On top of sky scrappers and under Lake Ontario. I feel as though I gotten to live a little bit of a lot of people's lives.

And it’s changed my life in ways I could never have imagined. I’ve come to understand that the camera can be a passport to the world. I’ve photographed factory workers and CEO’s, prisoners and presidents, some of the worlds richest people, and those among it’s poorest, and in front of the camera, when you get them to relax and be themselves, they're all just plain people... they're all just a joy to get to know. And if I can take a photo that captures a little bit of that knowledge and conveys it to the viewer, then I call that a successful photograph.