Dutch photographer Jan Banning is launching a series of pictures based on classical paintings to denounce the government’s immigration policies. In Moroccan Girl (Nissrine) Reading an Integration Exam Application Form at Closed Window, for example, Banning takes his cue from the seventeenth-century master Johannes Vermeer. Both the photograph’s title and composition strongly resemble those of Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. The girl’s clothes, moreover, recall those of The Milkmaid, perhaps Vermeer’s best-known painting. Banning says his photos are intended as accusations against “the nonsense of Dutch politics”, which over the past ten years has been dominated by the immigration debate. “Claims that the country is being flooded by immigrants are rubbish”, Banning says. “In relative terms, these past years the country hasn’t taken in more immigrants than over the past five centuries.” The picture forms part of a series entitled National Identities, which portrays immigrants in scenes that recreate well-known seventeenth-century paintings. Earlier this year, Banning’s work was chosen from among thousands of entries to be shown at The Hague’s Gemeentemuseum.
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/vermeer-2011-moroccan-milkmaid
