27/07/2026
Every government requires symbols of legitimacy, and a country’s bureaucracy gladly awards that authority. The civil services recount a nation’s political system, existing as a practical bridge between the citizens and the administration. An indispensable token of power, the branch became the focal point of photographer Jan Banning’s photobook titled Bureaucratics, co-authored with Will Tinnemans. The artist recently revisited the body of work, and published an expanded study — Bureaucratics Revisited, extending the visual, and sociological investigation to twelve countries, from eight.
India found itself a part of the original selection, where both Banning and Tinnemans travelled to the country, away from the organised capital of New Delhi to an utterly chaotic city of Patna through a common connection. Nearby towns were also shot. While the primary exploration of state vigor prevails, the photographer manages to shed light on the officers’ own lives — their personalised desks, their salaries, and how the offices become their own little community. Almost two decades later, with the revisited edition, he contemplates the same queries in an evolving, closed political atmosphere.
With his photobooks, Banning materialises Max Weber’s understanding of bureaucratic apparatus, a rationalised system of administration, whose impartiality could eventually tip into rigidity, and furthermore, alienation. A system built for fairness can still fail to see the person standing in front of it. By capturing the bureaucrats themselves, Banning manages to create what he understands as a window into a regime.
Image 1: India-17/2003 [Pat., SP (b. 1962)] Sushma Prasad is an assistant clerk in the Cabinet Secretary’s office of the State of Bihar (population 83 million) at The Old Secretariat in the state capital, Patna. She was hired “on compassionate grounds” following the death of her husband, who worked in the same department until 1997. Her monthly salary is 5,000 rupees (about US$110 or €100).
France-16/2006 [Cle., RV (b. 1957)] Roger Vacher is a narcotics agent with the national police force in Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dôme department, Auvergne region. His monthly salary
