In 1855, William Cooper Nell acknowledged Bannister's rising artistic status in "The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution" for his "The Ship Outward Bound". By 1858, Bannister was listed as an artist in Boston's city directory. Around 1862, he spent a year training in photography in New York, likely to support his painting practice, He then found work as a photographer, taking solar plates and tinting photos. One of Bannister's earliest commissioned portraits was of Prudence Nelson Bell in 1864, which is around when he found studio space at the Studio Building in Boston. At the Studio Building, he came into contact with other prominent artists, like Elihu Vedder and John La Farge. Once Bannister was established as an artist, abolitionist William Wells Brown praised Bannister in his 1865 book: