David Simonton
David Simonton (b. 1953) is a documentary artist based in Raleigh, NC. After relocating to the Oak City in 1989, Simonton began focusing his camera on small towns and has now photographed in more than 365 cities, towns, and rural communities across North Carolina. Simonton is a self-taught photographer who employs slow-speed film with his medium format camera to create black and white images in creating his quiet vignettes. He received Second Prize at the 12th Annual Center Awards Exhibition, sponsored by the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California. He was a finalist for the Daylight/CDS Photo Awards Project Prize (2011) and a semifinalist for the Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography (2002, 2004).
He is also the recipient of grants and commissions, including two Visual Artist Fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council (2000, 2008) and a commission from the North Carolina Museum of Art to photograph the old Polk Youth Center, now demolished, in Raleigh (2000-01). Publications like Photography Quarterly, The Photo Review, and The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South have all featured Simonton’s images. His work is held in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh); the George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY); the Asheville Art Museum; and the Cassilhaus Collection (Chapel Hill, NC), to name a few.