Artist Statement
Jan Banning (1954) was born from Dutch East Indies parents and studied social and economic history. Both of these facts are expressed in his photographic works. His origins for example in "Comfort Women" (forced into prostitution for the Japanese army during WW2) and "Traces of War: Survivors of the Burma and Sumatra Railways" about former forced labourers in South East Asia during the same period.
His academic education can be seen in the historical components of his subject matters and in his aim to achieve sound intellectual foundations for his projects on the basis of a thorough preliminary investigation, in his often conceptual approach and his regular use of the typological method.
Process Statement
Banning’s work always has a social focus, it often concerns subjects that have been neglected within the arts and are difficult to portray. In ‘Bureaucratics’, he makes a comparative study of the world of government officials in 8 countries. In "Comfort Women", "Traces of War" and "Down and Out in the South", he focuses more on the psychological aspects that major social events have on individuals.
His projects usually have a personal point of departure, but are never ‘private’. To give an example: the history of Banning’s father and grandfather who were forced to do hard labour during the war is not only limited to something biographical related to those two family members, but it is broadened into a research into the long-term influence of abuse and humiliation on European and Asian labour slaves ("Traces of War").
Jan Banning lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands
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