The Sweating Subject is a series of group portraits of tribal chiefs and their retinues, which include myself, photographer Jan Banning as the sweating subject himself. All are members of either the Gonja or the Dagomba tribe in the Northern Territories of Ghana — except for me: I am from the Netherlands, and I was in Ghana to photograph the blend of tradition and modernity found there, when he was invited by the chiefs to have my photo taken with them.

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Much has been said about the power of the photographer who, for journalistic or other reasons, travels the world to record ‘the other’. But in these photographs, although the camera position, lighting and other aesthetic and technical details were decided by me, the photographer is just as much an object as all the other people portrayed.

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The pictures are ‘selfies’ without self-determination: in the end it was my driver or one of my interpreters who pressed the button and was therefore responsible for the ‘decisive moment’. The Sweating Subject recalls colonial photographs in which we see a white ‘boss’ posing together with his coloured ‘subjects’. But here, the white man is suddenly a lot less impressive when seated among all these chiefs and courtiers, who look so proud, dignified, and at ease despite their heavy, warm ceremonial clothing. In fact, he looks like an alien, out of place and perspiring profusely in the unfamiliar climate. With thanks to historians Samuel Ntewusu (Accra) and Felix Longi (Tamale), and the interpreters and part-time photographers; Ruth Mango, Abdulai Iddrisu and driver Mohammed Fuseini in Tamale.

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‍About
Jan Banning was born of parents from the Dutch East Indies and studied social and economic history. These two facts have always had a strong influence on his photographic work. His origin is expressed in the choice of subjects, which include Indonesian comfort women: women forced to become sex slaves to the Japanese army during the Second World War; former forced railway labourers in South-East Asia during the same period; and the repatriation of elderly Moluccans. His academic background is reflected not only in the historical aspects of his subjects, but also in his research and the sound intellectual basis of his projects, his frequently conceptual approach, and his use of the typological method: visual research in which he looks for variations within a tightly repeated form. Banning’s work always has a social focus. The socio-political setting is at the fore and he often chooses subjects that he feels have been neglected in the arts and are difficult to portray: state power, consequences of war, justice, and injustice. Sometimes the work is the result of an approach relying on sociological or anthropological classification; sometimes it focuses more on the individual psychological impact of major social events. His projects often have a personal starting point but Banning invariably places these ‘private’ subjects in a wider social context. For example, when he tells how his father and grandfather were forced to do hard labour during the war, he broadens the project out to include research on the long-term effects of abuse and humiliation on European and Asian slave labourers generally. In his most recent ‘artivist’ project The Verdict: The Christina Boyer Case, he focuses on a wrongfully convicted woman in Georgia (US) who has been incarcerated for over 30 years already. He is also involved in attempts to get her released. Independent artist/photographer Jan Banning lives in Utrecht.

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