The photos all have a square format (fitting the subject), are shot from the same height (that of the client), with the desk – its front or side photographed parallel to the horizontal edges of the frame – serving as a bulwark protecting the representative of rule and regulation against the individual citizen, the warm-blooded exception. They are full of telling details that sometimes reveal the way the state proclaims its power or the bureaucrat’s rank and function, sometimes of a more private character and are accompanied by information such as name, age, function and salary.
Tags: jan banning photographer bureaucratics exhib exhibition
Bureaucratics is a project consisting of a book (ISBN 978-1-59005-232-7) and exhibition containing 50 photographs, the product of an anarchist’s heart, a historian’s mind and an artist’s eye.
Tags: jan banning photographer bureaucratics exhib exhibition
It 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 polical, historical and cultural considerations: Bolivia, China, France, India, Liberia, Russia, the United States, and Yemen.
Tags: jan banning photographer bureaucratics exhib exhibition
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.
Tags: jan banning photographer bureaucratics exhib exhibition
www.janbanning.com/gallery/bureaucratics/ Seen in the Schouwburg Amstelveen, oct.2012
Tags: jan banning photographer bureaucratics exhib exhibition