Bureaucratics by Jan Banning

Jan Banning was born in The Netherlands in 1954, from Dutch-East-Indies immigrant parents. He studied social and economic history at the University of Nijmegen and has been working as a photographer since 1981.

His work, rooted in both art and journalism, has been exhibited in museums and galleries and published widely in books, magazines and newspapers. The central concern in his work is the theme of state power (and its abuse); Banning has produced series on the long-term consequences of war and the world of government bureaucracy. Recently, he finished a portrait series of World War II “comfort women” in Indonesia.


Aside from Dutch, Banning is fluent in English, German and Spanish, speaks French reasonably well, and speaks some Portuguese and Indonesian.