Jan Banning

Jan Banning (b.1954) is a Dutch artist/photographer based in the Netherlands. His parents were born and raised in the colonial Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). Banning studied social and economic history at the Radboud University of Nijmegen. In 2008, Banning gained worldwide recognition with his critically acclaimed book Bureaucratics (government offices in eight countries worldwide), edited by Martin Parr, that garnered rave reviews as well as a World Press Photo award. Often, his...See more

Jan Banning (b.1954) is a Dutch artist/photographer based in the Netherlands. His parents were born and raised in the colonial Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). Banning studied social and economic history at the Radboud University of Nijmegen. In 2008, Banning gained worldwide recognition with his critically acclaimed book Bureaucratics (government offices in eight countries worldwide), edited by Martin Parr, that garnered rave reviews as well as a World Press Photo award. Often, his work has a personal starting point. Traces of War: Survivors of the Burma and Sumatra Railways (2003) contains 24 portraits and interviews of Dutch and Indonesian former WWII forced laborers in South East Asia - including Banning's father. Comfort Women (2010) is a series of close-up portraits of Indonesian women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during WWII. In The Sweating Subject (2018) he puts an ironic twist on colonial photography. The small series National Identities is an attack on xenophobic populism. Law & Order (2015), an in-depth look at the intricacies of the judiciary in four countries on four continents, paved the way to The Verdict . Banning has had more than 80 solo exhibitions around the world. His work is included in many public, private and corporate collections, including those of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, the Forward Thinking Museum in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Berlin. Since May 2018, he has been working full-time as an 'artivist' on the case of Christina Boyer. See less