© Jan Banning

Jan Banning says, “This photo was made in the Old Secretariat in Patna, Bihar, India, while working on my project ‘Bureaucratics’. Because of the strong diagonal, I considered it too ‘dynamic’ to be included in the book or the exhibition of the same name. How dynamic was the situation in this typeroom really? When I entered, of the dozen or so people in the room, two or three were snoring. Others had their feet on the desk and were comfortably – but living dangerously – leaning backward on their chair’s two hind legs, dozing away. One man was actually doing what I naively thought they were all supposed to do: typing. When asked why they kept this ‘typewriter graveyard’, he answered: ‘This is not a  graveyard! These typewriters are awaiting new personnel. We’re 40% understaffed.”

‘Bureaucratics’ can be seen as part of the Moving Walls exhibit at Open Society Institute and also at the Half King gallery in New York, NY.