Jan Banning

Who is Jan Banning?

Jan Banning is a Dutch photographer and artist.

Banning was born in the Netherlands from Dutch-East-Indies parents. He studied social and economic history at the Radbout University of Nijmegen, and has been working as a photographer since 1981. A central theme of Banning's practice is state power, having produced series about the long-term consequences of war and the world of government bureaucracy.

His Dutch East Indies’ roots are expressed in his choice of subjects, such as Indonesian women who were forced to become prostitutes for the Japanese army during the Second World War in ‘Comfort Women’; or former forced labourers in South East Asia during the same period in ‘Traces of War: Survivors of the Burma and Sumatra Railways’; also the repatriation of elderly Moluccans from the Netherlands to the Indonesian Moluccas in ‘Pulang: Back to Maluku’. His study of history is reflected in the historical components of his subject matters and his academic education is expressed in his aim to achieve sound intellectual foundations for his projects on the basis of a thorough preliminary investigation.