Jan Banning
Bureaucratics
- PhotographerJan Banning
FELIX ODELL Amazing capture of people in bureaucratic situations all over the world. Compositional symmetry and straight lines reinforce the symbolic "wall" between state power and the individual citizen, positioning the desk as both barrier and interface. A perfect example of a perfect project—and what emerges is pure magic.
The Project
Bureaucratics is a project consisting of a book and a traveling exhibition that has so far been shown in museums and galleries in some twenty countries on five continents. The book and the exhibition contain 50 photographs and are the product of an anarchist’s heart, a historian’s mind and an artist’s eye. Bureaucratics is a comparative photographic study of the culture, rituals and symbols of state civil administrations and its servants in eight countries on five continents, selected on the basis of political, historical and cultural considerations: Bolivia, China, France, India, Liberia, Russia, the United States, and Yemen.
In each country, they visited up to hundreds of offices of members of the executive in different services and at different levels. The visits were unannounced and the accompanying writer, Will Tinnemans, by interviewing kept the employees from tidying up or clearing the office. That way, the photos show what a local citizen would be confronted with when entering. The photography has a conceptual, typological approach reminding of August Sander’s ‘Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts’ (‘People of the Twentieth Century’).
A new version of the book, ‘Bureaucratics Revisited,’ will be published in late 2025 and can be pre-ordered here: https://janbanning.com/product/bureaucratics/
