Kunsthal Rotterdam presents a series of impressive portraits of so-called ‘comfort women' made by photographer Jan Banning almost sixty-five years after the end of World War II.
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 are courageous enough to share their painful history of involuntary prostitution, forced upon them by the Japanese occupator. 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 thousands of comfort women from Asia which has been kept silent for so long, as is sadly still so often the case with instances of rape in times of war.
Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied: 'Troostmeisjes / Comfort Women', Ipso Facto Utrecht / Seltmann+Söhne Lüdenscheid (ISBN 978-90-77386-070-1).
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