All the World’s Fighter Planes is a compilation of found newspaper images representing every type of fighter aircraft currently in commission anywhere in the world. The name of each plane is listed on the front and back covers, 170 in all. The book compiles newspaper clippings of each of the different aircraft models. The clippings (as well as the aircraft) come in a variety of shapes and sizes, both small and large, some cut following the contours of the planes, others ripped carelessly from their source, some scattered haphazardly across the open pages, others in full page close-up. At times, fragments of text captions hint at a narrative context and all the images show the aircraft in some form of action. But considered within the broader context of Banner’s other text based works, the sequence of airplane images themselves make up a kind of deadpan narrative in the absence of any textual framework. The book also creates a gripping tension between the everyday low-tech contents, banal newspaper clippings, and the subject depicted: the latest high tech killing machines. And finally, there is the allusion to a twisted construction of nature: page after page, the images of the aircraft begin to evoke monstrous mechanized birds, insects, flying beasts, fantastical dragons. Referring back to the aircraft names on the covers, it is hard not to notice the prevalence of the same: Hornet, Sea Hawk, Panther, Cougar, Warthog, Osprey, Black Hawk, and so on.
