Monday, March 5, 2012, my dad died. Frans Banning was almost 91 years old. He was born in 1921 in Makassar in the colony of the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. During WW II, he worked as a forced laborer for the Japanese Military on the Sumatra (also called: Pakanbaroe) Railroad: see my book and exhibition Traces of War; Survivors of the Burma and Sumatra Railways (Dutch title: Sporen van oorlog. Overlevenden van de Birma- en de Pakanbaroe-spoorweg).
An unconventional optimist, he was loved by many. In the company of some 150-200 people, we laid him to rest on Saturday, March 10, in the Dutch town of Dieren.
- Jan Banning
May 4th 1954, Almelo
Dutch photographer and artist. Banning was born in the Netherlands from Dutch-East-Indies parents. He studied social and economic history at the Radboud University 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.