Dynell L. Bonner is a photographer and visual artist based in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, born in Houston, Texas. His work examines memory, identity, and the conditions of visibility for Black communities in Hawai‘i, particularly where their presence has been historically underrepresented and unevenly recorded.

Working across photography, video, sound, and installation, Bonner approaches the image as both document and intervention. His practice is grounded in sustained relationships with the people and communities he photographs, where trust, proximity, and time shape how images are made and understood. Through portraiture, archival reference, and oral testimony, his work considers how histories are preserved, obscured, and re-narrated. At the core of his practice is an ongoing negotiation between subject, photographer, and viewer, engaging questions of authorship, representation, and the instability of photographic truth. He develops long-form projects that combine large-scale imagery, sound, and spatial presentation to explore absence, historical continuity, and the conditions under which visibility is produced. His work often centers communities navigating displacement, cultural fragmentation, and inherited memory within contemporary American landscapes.

Bonner earned his B.A. in Arts & Markets (Visual & Studio Arts) from Hawai‘i Pacific University, graduating magna cum laude. He is currently an MFA candidate in Visual Arts at Clark University.