In photos: More snapshots from government offices around the world

Over five years, Dutch photographer Jan Banning shot bureaucrats at work in Russia, Liberia, the US, France, India and more. Take a look.

Panchayat head Harsh Deo Prasad in the village of Tehta, Jahanabad, Bihar. The series of photographs set in India won a World Press Photo award. “We chose Bihar because we didn’t want to go to any country’s capital, where systems are generally more organised,” says Dutch photographer Jan Banning. (Jan Banning)

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A ‘typewriter room’ at the Old Secretariat in Patna. The old machines were awaiting users, Banning was told. The department was said to be 40% understaffed. (Jan Banning)

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In Liberia, the poverty was so extreme that sometimes there was only one chair, or officials had brought in their own desks. You could see ‘Private Property’ written on these desks, Banning says. (Jan Banning)

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Marlene Abigahit Choque, a detective with the Potosi police department in Bolivia. When Banning visited, conditions were so poor that some police personnel had to use public buses, in the absence of official cars or motorcycles. Offices held broken typewriters, no computers, no copy machines, not even telephones. . (Jan Banning)

An office in Picardy, France. ‘What’s interesting is that this is a world that no longer exists,’ says Banning. This project and these books are now a record of a simpler world, a historical account of a time when outsiders were not viewed with as much suspicion, not even in government offices. . (Jan Banning)

In the beautiful Yemeni capital of Sana’a. (Jan Banning)