Pavel Baňka was born in 1941 in Prague, Czech Republic. He graduated from the Czech Technical University (1958–1963), in 1964–66 he was a member of the Czech beatnik group together with Václav Hrabě, Inka Machulková and Vlaďka Čerepková. Baňka started taking photography seriously only at the end of the 1970s, when he left his research job and started a career of a freelance photographer. Initially, he published in Czechoslovak interior design and architecture magazines and from the 1990s, he devoted himself exclusively to art photography.
In 1990, Baňka co-founded the Prague House of Photography and served as chairman of the board of directors for several years. His long stays in the USA impacted his career, when he worked as a guest artist at universities including Ohio University in 1992-93, and became represented by several important galleries in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. From 1995, Baňka has been leading the Atelier of Photography, College of Applied Arts and Design in Ústí nad Labem. In 2002, he co-founded the Fotograf magazine and manages it to this day.
Between 2005-2010, Baňka was serving as Visiting Professor for European Photography, University of Derby, UK. In 2009, together with colleagues from the FOTOGRAF magazine, Baňka founded a new initiative in the field of photography - Fotograf Gallery, a non-profit center for photography and contemporary art, focused on exhibitions of photography by young photographers and education of the public in the field of photography.
Pavel Baňka was featured at FotoFest 1990 – Perspectives, Real and Imaginary: Nineteen Contemporary Czechoslovak Photographers curated by Wendy Watriss and Frederic C. Baldwin, and exhibited at FotoFest Biannual in 2000. He was a member of the international jury of portfolio reviewers at FotoFest 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010. As The Guardian put it, “With his surreal juxtapositions and abstractions, Pavel Baňka photographs a world on the edge of dreams.” Pavel Baňka lives and works in Prague.