Monica Bannan

Monica Bannan

San Francisco, CA

“What I really admire about Joshua is his philanthropic arm, and it's because of that philanthropic arm that I was exposed to his photography. He donates photography packages to nonprofits and schools. I'm the president of the board of directors for Dress for Success San Francisco, he donated to our holiday event, and I bought the package.”

Capturing natural moments and natural expressions is really important to us.

He only does black and white which is amazing. Not a lot of people do that… at the time he might have been shooting film, but he does the printing himself. He has a dark room and because both of us have developed prints ourselves like we know the value of a machine not doing it but a human adjusting it and printing it right and then we were super impressed.”

“So, Joshua calls us in to go through the proofs to ultimately decide which ones we want and make the purchase. My husband's kind of snotty about photography so he was still a little skeptical, but we sat down and he ran it through the proofs on the screen. They were beautiful, stunning pictures but we liked so many of them but the bill was getting higher and higher… they're not cheap— they’re works of art.”

“They were really precious pictures, what he drew out of our children are expressions that we see out of our children in our everyday life but are rarely captured in photos. We hung them in our house and every day I walk by them and think, oh, they're so beautiful.”

They are incredible in their own way and yes some of the pictures were in the exact same spots as the first shoot but they were completely different. So yeah I'm a fan, and even my husband was.”

“I feel like Joshua captures the whimsy and the closeness of our family and when I look at the photos I feel a great sense of pride in achievement that my husband and I have been able to make this family like this.”

“For each of their individual pictures he was able to capture their character, there's a twinkle in a mysteriousness in his eyes and you can see my youngest is silly and outspoken. There's this energy that you feel as brothers. There's a seriousness and a bond between them that comes out through the pictures, which I love.”

“My parents went to a run of the mill photographer like JCPenney or Sears and so those are formal family photos. I do wish that I had more photo journalistic pictures of my whole life you know, they’re so valuable.”

It makes me tear up and it makes me feel like I'm doing something to create like a legacy for the family that's beautiful.

I would recommend him because they're not just family photographs— they’re art— they're heirloom quality you could pass them down.”