The faces of homelessness – Jan Banning

The faces of homelessness – Jan Banning Dutch photographer Jan Banning combined powerful political themes and an exceptional feeling for portraits. His story is the story of homeless people from Americas south. The series began in 2010 when Jan was invited, by Columbia’s 701 Center for Contemporary Art, to create a series of homeless portraits.

Banning was initially hesitant to take on the project because he felt the often-ignored population was paradoxically ubiquitous in the world of documentary photography. The images seen were typically shot in the same manner: black-and-white, on-location, and, typically, with a sense of despair.

Banning has a history of documenting the forgotten pockets of society from the impoverished in Malawi to women forced into a life of prostitution in Asia and decided that photographing the homeless community in color and in a studio environment would be the best approach to the series.

“I wanted to photograph them in a studio setting, against a neutral backdrop, focusing on their individuality rather than on stereotypes,” Banning wrote on his website. “In essence, I want to show who they are rather than what they are labeled.”

“I’m satisfied with it,” Banning said about his photographic choices. “This is not a popular subject; it’s an extremely unpopular subject.”

Shooting in Columbia and also in Atlanta, Banning worked with an outreach worker of a homeless organization to find people to photograph. With the help of a photography assistant, he set up a mobile studio and would do a brief interview with the subjects before taking their pictures. Banning said that process helped create a more intimate portrait, something he had done in his previous work, “Bureaucratics.”