Kunsthal Rotterdam presents a series of impressive portraits of so-called Comfort Women made by photographer Jan Banning. The photographs are close-ups of the faces of very old women from Java, Sumatra and the Maluku Islands; these pictures tell the incomprehensibly sad stories of these comfort women.
At a time when so many people still choose to remain silent about what has happened, these women were courageous enough to share their painful history of involuntary prostitution, forced upon them by the Japanese occupator in World War II. Their eyes tell the story of a past that will never leave their minds. With this series of portraits Banning breaks through the taboo history of ten thousand of comfort women from Asia which has been kept silent for so long.
Photographer Jan Banning and journalist Hilde Janssen traveled through Indonesia for about two years to find women who wanted to tell their story to the world. They created two books: one with the pictures of the almost fifty women, called Comfort Women, and the book Shame and Innocence, the repressed war history of comfort girls in Indonesia.
Jan Banning - Comfort Women
April 24th - August 29th 2010
Kunsthal, Rotterdam
Written for BLEND.
Photographer Jan Banning and journalist Hilde Janssen traveled through Indonesia for about two years to find women who wanted to tell their story to the world. They created two books: one with the pictures of the almost fifty women, called Comfort Women, and the book Shame and Innocence, the repressed war history of comfort girls in Indonesia.
Jan Banning - Comfort Women
April 24th - August 29th 2010
Kunsthal, Rotterdam
Written for BLEND.
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