Law & Order: The World of Criminal Justice | Jan Banning
Book Launch

“If we can’t come up with anything better than imprisonment, then it is good to be aware of human evolution. A portion of the prison population certainly consists of pathological criminals. But what about all the others?”– Jan Banning

In 2008, Dutch photographer Jan Banning gained worldwide recognition with the release of his book Bureaucratics (Nazraeli Press) that garnered rave reviews and sold out quickly. Edited by Martin Parr, it contains 50 environmental portraits of civil servants in eight countries: Bolivia, China, France, India, Liberia, Russia, the United States and Yemen.

Jan Banning’s newest book, Law & Order: The World of Criminal Justice, which releases in the United States this fall, is a natural extension of Bureaucratics. The book is a rare and innovative examination of criminal justice combining the world of photographic art with that of legal science. Banning’s photographs reveal the daily realities of the police, the courts, the prisoners, and the often hidden prison conditions in four countries: Colombia, France, Uganda and the United States.

Jan Banning will discuss his work with noted photo editor and independent curator Elisabeth Biondi followed by a book signing.

JAN BANNING is a Dutch autonomous artist/photographer, based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He was born in Almelo
(Netherlands) on May 4, 1954, from Dutch East Indies parents, and he studied social and economic history at the Radbout University of Nijmegen. Banning’s art work has been acquired by museums such as the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. His photo series have been published in print media that include Days Japan, GEO (France, Germany, and International), l’Espresso, Newsweek (US and Japan), One World, Sunday Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian Weekend, National Geographic, Time, Vrij Nederland, among many other outlets. Banning has been the subject of a television documentary by Frank van Osch entitled A Touch of Cruelty. To visit Jan Banning’s website, go to: www.janbanning.com.

After fifteen years as Visuals Editor of The New Yorker, ELISABETH BIONDI left the publication in the spring of 2011 to work as an Independent Curator. She has curated Subjective/Objective and Under The Bridge for the NY PhotoFestival 2011 and New Yorker Fiction/Real Photography at Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea. In 2011 her exhibition Beyond Worlds: Photography in the New Yorker was the fall season’s opening show at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York and an expanded versions of the show traveled to the Ullens Center in Beijing. Her exhibition Widely Different: New York City Panoramas was on view at the Seaport Museum in New York. Biondi is a Senior Thesis Adviser for SVA Graduate School and a photography consultant for Stern magazine. Her column Portfolio is published in Photograph. Most recently she was a juror for the World Press Photography Awards in Amsterdam and the Sony World Photography Awards in London, the addition to numerous other national and international photography juries. For more information, please visit: http://www.biondifoto.com/