James Barnor - Stories: Pictures from the Archive

JAMES BARNOR STORIES PICTURES FROM THE ARCHIVE (1 9 47–1 9 8 7 )

This book has been published on the occasion of the exhibition James Barnor: Stories Pictures from the Archive (1947–1987) at the Tour du Parc des Ateliers, LUMA ARLES, from July 4, 2022.

JA M ES B A R N O R STO R I ES P I CT U R E S F RO M T H E A RC H I V E (1947–1987)

© LUMA ARLES, Maison CF Paris and RRB Photobooks Bristol, 2022 ISBN (France distribution) 979-10-96575-26-8 ISBN (UK and worldwide distribution) 978-1-8382-6838-1

MAISON CF

This book has been published on the occasion of the exhibition James Barnor: Stories Pictures from the Archive (1947–1987) at the Tour du Parc des Ateliers, LUMA ARLES, from July 4, 2022.

JA M ES B A R N O R STO R I ES P I CT U R E S F RO M T H E A RC H I V E (1947–1987)

© LUMA ARLES, Maison CF Paris and RRB Photobooks Bristol, 2022 ISBN (France distribution) 979-10-96575-26-8 ISBN (UK and worldwide distribution) 978-1-8382-6838-1

MAISON CF

CONTENTS Foreword

7

MAJA HOFFMANN

James Barnor: an Anglo-Ghanaian odyssey

8

MATTHIEU HUMERY

Between Accra and London: A photographic adventure

11

DAMARICE AMAO

Behind the images: James Barnor’s archive-world

21

MARGAUX LAVERNHE

Capturing potential: a brief history of Ghana’s progress

41

BIANCA MANU

Pictures form the archive (1947–1987) Ghana

51

United Kingdom

111

Ghana

157

Interview with James Barnor

257

1947–1959 1959–1969 1970–1987 Portrait of James Barnor in front of his advertising board, lent to his Nigerian friend and photographer Francis Eme, Jamestown, Accra, c. 1952

HANS ULRICH OBRIST

Shaping new stories ISABELLA SENIUTA

277

Annexes Chronology

287

Exhibitions and publications

290

Publisher’s note

292

CONTENTS Foreword

7

MAJA HOFFMANN

James Barnor: an Anglo-Ghanaian odyssey

8

MATTHIEU HUMERY

Between Accra and London: A photographic adventure

11

DAMARICE AMAO

Behind the images: James Barnor’s archive-world

21

MARGAUX LAVERNHE

Capturing potential: a brief history of Ghana’s progress

41

BIANCA MANU

Pictures form the archive (1947–1987) Ghana

51

United Kingdom

111

Ghana

157

Interview with James Barnor

257

1947–1959 1959–1969 1970–1987 Portrait of James Barnor in front of his advertising board, lent to his Nigerian friend and photographer Francis Eme, Jamestown, Accra, c. 1952

HANS ULRICH OBRIST

Shaping new stories ISABELLA SENIUTA

277

Annexes Chronology

287

Exhibitions and publications

290

Publisher’s note

292

In its Living Archives Gallery, dedicated this summer to photography, LUMA ARLES is honoured to host the first retrospective in France devoted to the immense oeuvre of James Barnor.

A major African photographer, Barnor was a first-hand witness to the social, political and cultural upheavals of a world in reconstruction after the Second World War. Following his retrospective at the Serpentine North Gallery in London in 2021, we asked him to select, with the assistance of Matthieu Humery, a new portfolio of his favourite images. The resulting overview of Barnor’s work, alternating between black and white prints and colour photographs, takes us back to the early days of Ghanaian independence, from the clubs of Ghana’s capital Accra, filled with young people exuberantly expressing themselves, to the streets of London in the fervour of the 1960s. The artist’s private journey is inseparable from his artistic career. Recounting a life story, his photographs are not only testimonies to the newfound effervescence that marked the post-war years, but also mementos of his personal odyssey. This retrospective was conceived as a legacy that the artist and the LUMA Foundation wish to bequeath to future generations.

Already a figure of reference for countless contemporary artists, James Barnor saw this project as an opportunity to share his work with a wider audience. For this reason, the exhibition produced by LUMA Foundation is part of the programme associated with the Rencontres d’Arles international photography festival, which every year from July to September draws a large expert public to Arles, as well as a great many amateurs, whether well-informed or simply curious. This role of transmission is part of the core essence of LUMA’s living archives, which seek through this type of exhibition to offer access to works that embody the transition from one era to another, forging a visual bond between the past and the present.

Now over the age of ninety, the artist James Barnor has much to say on his body of work, and the multitude of stories behind it.

MAJA HOFFMANN

7

In its Living Archives Gallery, dedicated this summer to photography, LUMA ARLES is honoured to host the first retrospective in France devoted to the immense oeuvre of James Barnor.

A major African photographer, Barnor was a first-hand witness to the social, political and cultural upheavals of a world in reconstruction after the Second World War. Following his retrospective at the Serpentine North Gallery in London in 2021, we asked him to select, with the assistance of Matthieu Humery, a new portfolio of his favourite images. The resulting overview of Barnor’s work, alternating between black and white prints and colour photographs, takes us back to the early days of Ghanaian independence, from the clubs of Ghana’s capital Accra, filled with young people exuberantly expressing themselves, to the streets of London in the fervour of the 1960s. The artist’s private journey is inseparable from his artistic career. Recounting a life story, his photographs are not only testimonies to the newfound effervescence that marked the post-war years, but also mementos of his personal odyssey. This retrospective was conceived as a legacy that the artist and the LUMA Foundation wish to bequeath to future generations.

Already a figure of reference for countless contemporary artists, James Barnor saw this project as an opportunity to share his work with a wider audience. For this reason, the exhibition produced by LUMA Foundation is part of the programme associated with the Rencontres d’Arles international photography festival, which every year from July to September draws a large expert public to Arles, as well as a great many amateurs, whether well-informed or simply curious. This role of transmission is part of the core essence of LUMA’s living archives, which seek through this type of exhibition to offer access to works that embody the transition from one era to another, forging a visual bond between the past and the present.

Now over the age of ninety, the artist James Barnor has much to say on his body of work, and the multitude of stories behind it.

MAJA HOFFMANN

7

JAMES BARNOR: A N A N G LO - G H A N A IA N O DY S S E Y The oeuvre of a photographer, and more generally that of an artist, can in some cases become intertwined with his biography. Its interest does not lie solely in a specific work or a particular series, but rather in the consistency of an activity pursued, in various places at different times, with a sense of dedication and professionalism. One thinks of the artisan toiling in his workshop for decades on end, leaving behind a sanctum that inspires admiration and respect. In sum, a life of pure devotion to a craft, a career that stands out from the mass. There is something of this quality in James Barnor, who during a pivotal period in history produced a wide range of images, from studio photography to “Swinging London”, from the beauty of African women to the Ghanaian independence movement, from picturesque English scenes to African chic, from black and white to colour, from local to global. The observer comes away with an insight into a life journey that took place across a wide variety of eras and settings, tracing the path of a unique destiny marked by adventures and risk-taking, tradition and the cutting edge.

Brimming with enthusiasm after his birth country, Ghana, achieved independence in the late 1950s, James Barnor left for London, a city then reinventing itself under the impetus of a newly empowered generation of “baby boomers”. There he immersed himself in the latest trends, photographing the African diaspora in the British capital and doing fashion shoots for the South African magazine Drum. Ten years later he returned to his native land, to Accra, and opened a new studio called Studio X23, harking back to his first studio, the legendary Ever Young, located in the capital’s Jamestown district.

During those ten years in London, Barnor’s photographic practice evolved, progressing from the studio work that he did in Accra in the late 1950s to the natural backdrop of the street, replete with passers-by, buildings and endless slices of life.

He followed very closely the development of colour photography, which was gradually becoming more and more widespread. Most often used sparingly for special occasions like family gatherings or major holiday trips, colour film was still expensive and not universally appreciated among professional photographers, many of whom saw it as vulgar and superfluous. Nonetheless, Barnor found in it an expressive medium that suited his aspirations in connection with commissions for advertisements and fashion series. He even became one of the first to champion colour photography in Ghana as a representative for Agfa-Gevaert film. In so doing, he aligned himself with a modernity that was closing the gap between fine art and life, between academism and everyday practices, between idealism and reality.

Following his intuition, Barnor captured an era characterised by insouciance, with a documentary approach and a touch of chic glamour.

8

Looking at his work from the 1960s and 1970s today, from our 21st-century perspective, we are struck by its cultural intricacy, the blending of different trends in photography, of diverse aesthetics in which the norms of representation overlap and merge. We can now rightly consider James Barnor to be a photographer whose work bears witness to the inception of globalisation, who, despite keeping a low profile, prefigured the cultural exchanges, economic interpenetration and free market of influences that define our increasingly fluid and multilateral world.

Beyond his compelling visual testimony of a world in movement, Barnor’s own movements come to the fore. The perception of his work, which blurs the long-established hierarchy between the local and international artist (in many ways an artificial distinction), follows a trajectory, a cyclical pattern in time and space that, as in a coming-of-age novel, returns to its starting point only to take off again. This trajectory should be seen not as a collage of moments in which Barnor followed the spirit of his times, but rather in a retrograde movement in which he offers us his own narration and vision of a fast-changing world.

It is often towards the closing chapter of a creative life that the basic perspective lines defining the architecture of an artist’s work come into focus. All of these lines lead to fundamental questions without which a body of work would lack an overall goal or lose its bearings. Ultimately, Barnor seems to be investigating the concept of identity in relation to the concept of “elsewhere” that has impelled artists, from Paul Gauguin to Robert Frank, to venture abroad, to seek inspiration from and lose themselves in foreign surroundings, to better understand the world in which they live and, more importantly, themselves.

This theme is as old as that of the odyssey, but here the mirror is erected along a singular path where exoticism is inverted, where Europe is Africanised and Africa is internationalised, where leaving makes it possible to return, where the destination is the starting point. Since Barnor was in London during the ebullient years of the 1960s, we could venture an analogy: it is often asked why Ringo Starr was considered one of the best drummers in the world. Some strongly doubt that he ever was, while others, more impassioned and no doubt more percipient, maintain that he was among the best because he was in the right place at the right time and did the job. He stayed the course, continuing as long as possible to do what he did best: playing the drums. One could say the same of James Barnor, that he was in the right place at the right time, doing what he knew best how to do: taking photographs.

MATTHIEU HUMERY

9

JAMES BARNOR: A N A N G LO - G H A N A IA N O DY S S E Y The oeuvre of a photographer, and more generally that of an artist, can in some cases become intertwined with his biography. Its interest does not lie solely in a specific work or a particular series, but rather in the consistency of an activity pursued, in various places at different times, with a sense of dedication and professionalism. One thinks of the artisan toiling in his workshop for decades on end, leaving behind a sanctum that inspires admiration and respect. In sum, a life of pure devotion to a craft, a career that stands out from the mass. There is something of this quality in James Barnor, who during a pivotal period in history produced a wide range of images, from studio photography to “Swinging London”, from the beauty of African women to the Ghanaian independence movement, from picturesque English scenes to African chic, from black and white to colour, from local to global. The observer comes away with an insight into a life journey that took place across a wide variety of eras and settings, tracing the path of a unique destiny marked by adventures and risk-taking, tradition and the cutting edge.

Brimming with enthusiasm after his birth country, Ghana, achieved independence in the late 1950s, James Barnor left for London, a city then reinventing itself under the impetus of a newly empowered generation of “baby boomers”. There he immersed himself in the latest trends, photographing the African diaspora in the British capital and doing fashion shoots for the South African magazine Drum. Ten years later he returned to his native land, to Accra, and opened a new studio called Studio X23, harking back to his first studio, the legendary Ever Young, located in the capital’s Jamestown district.

During those ten years in London, Barnor’s photographic practice evolved, progressing from the studio work that he did in Accra in the late 1950s to the natural backdrop of the street, replete with passers-by, buildings and endless slices of life.

He followed very closely the development of colour photography, which was gradually becoming more and more widespread. Most often used sparingly for special occasions like family gatherings or major holiday trips, colour film was still expensive and not universally appreciated among professional photographers, many of whom saw it as vulgar and superfluous. Nonetheless, Barnor found in it an expressive medium that suited his aspirations in connection with commissions for advertisements and fashion series. He even became one of the first to champion colour photography in Ghana as a representative for Agfa-Gevaert film. In so doing, he aligned himself with a modernity that was closing the gap between fine art and life, between academism and everyday practices, between idealism and reality.

Following his intuition, Barnor captured an era characterised by insouciance, with a documentary approach and a touch of chic glamour.

8

Looking at his work from the 1960s and 1970s today, from our 21st-century perspective, we are struck by its cultural intricacy, the blending of different trends in photography, of diverse aesthetics in which the norms of representation overlap and merge. We can now rightly consider James Barnor to be a photographer whose work bears witness to the inception of globalisation, who, despite keeping a low profile, prefigured the cultural exchanges, economic interpenetration and free market of influences that define our increasingly fluid and multilateral world.

Beyond his compelling visual testimony of a world in movement, Barnor’s own movements come to the fore. The perception of his work, which blurs the long-established hierarchy between the local and international artist (in many ways an artificial distinction), follows a trajectory, a cyclical pattern in time and space that, as in a coming-of-age novel, returns to its starting point only to take off again. This trajectory should be seen not as a collage of moments in which Barnor followed the spirit of his times, but rather in a retrograde movement in which he offers us his own narration and vision of a fast-changing world.

It is often towards the closing chapter of a creative life that the basic perspective lines defining the architecture of an artist’s work come into focus. All of these lines lead to fundamental questions without which a body of work would lack an overall goal or lose its bearings. Ultimately, Barnor seems to be investigating the concept of identity in relation to the concept of “elsewhere” that has impelled artists, from Paul Gauguin to Robert Frank, to venture abroad, to seek inspiration from and lose themselves in foreign surroundings, to better understand the world in which they live and, more importantly, themselves.

This theme is as old as that of the odyssey, but here the mirror is erected along a singular path where exoticism is inverted, where Europe is Africanised and Africa is internationalised, where leaving makes it possible to return, where the destination is the starting point. Since Barnor was in London during the ebullient years of the 1960s, we could venture an analogy: it is often asked why Ringo Starr was considered one of the best drummers in the world. Some strongly doubt that he ever was, while others, more impassioned and no doubt more percipient, maintain that he was among the best because he was in the right place at the right time and did the job. He stayed the course, continuing as long as possible to do what he did best: playing the drums. One could say the same of James Barnor, that he was in the right place at the right time, doing what he knew best how to do: taking photographs.

MATTHIEU HUMERY

9

B E T WEEN AC CR A A ND LO ND O N : A PH OTO G R A PHI C A DV ENT U RE DAMARICE AMAO

Fig. 1 Kofi Baako, a minister in Kwame Nkrumah’s government between 1957 and 1966, Accra, late 1950s

1. Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun, London, Penguin, 2002, p. 9.

2. Ibid., p. 19. Kofi Baako (1926–1994) was officially designated “Minister of Information and Broadcasting” from 1957 to 1959, then Minister of Defence from 1961 to 1966.

3. Ibid., p. 16.

4. Ibid., p. 20.

5. In 1963 the Ghanaian government called upon Paul Strand to undertake a photographic campaign to create a portrait of the new Ghanaian society: Ghana: An African Portrait, Paul Strand and Basil Davidson, New York, Aperture, 1976. The Ministry of Information, via Ghana Information Services, directed by Kofi Baako, organised the publication of several illustrated works conceived to spotlight the young nation’s accomplishments, including Ghana is Born, London, Newman Neame Limited, Accra, Ghana Information Services, 1958.

6. For example, the encouragement of amateur photography within the scholastic establishments frequented by the native elite of the British colonial society.

“The Beginning: Collision, Ghana, 1958”:1 the discovery of this newly independent nation, the first country that he visited on the African continent, was an astonishing experience for the Polish reporter Rudyard Kapuściński. The light, the sun of Africa, was no doubt a factor. But that was not all. Sidestepping the usual snapshots that punctuate travel reports, Kapuściński was more intrigued by the flash of the camera wielded by the youngest minister in Kwame Nkrumah’s government, whom he met upon arrival: Kofi Baako (fig. 1), in charge of “schools, higher education, the press, radio, publishing houses, museums, and everything concerning science, culture, art and propaganda for the whole country”.2 The young man with the big portfolio was also an enthusiastic amateur photographer. As he confided to Kapuściński, “I have another hobby that I love even more: photography. I shoot photos everywhere, all the time. I have more than ten cameras. When I go into a shop and see a new model, I just have to buy it.”3 One night Baako took the Polish visitor on a walk through the streets of Accra: “We went out to take photos. With all of his cameras dangling from his body, Baako went from table to table. . . . He would look around, choosing the spots with the prettiest girls and asking them to pose, to laugh while his flash went off.” At the end of the night he would invite Kapuściński to “come over tomorrow and we’ll develop the photos”.4 The account, with its picturesque details, could simply be a reporter’s technique for adding “colour” to a travelogue, but in fact it neatly sums up all of the fascination elicited by a country under construction, and by the women and men, like Baako, who had patiently paved the way for its emancipation. By offering a portrait of his Ghanaian companion, Kapuściński sought to shed light on the enigma of the extraordinary destiny of this dynamic young minister of the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence. For any historian of the medium, the mention of the young man’s passion for photography is, here again, not just an anecdote. This devotion to photography at the highest level of the national government raises questions, prompting an investigation of the direct impact of this interest and its dissemination, in terms of custom and practice, within a society in the process of learning to adopt the language of modernity, while completing the political construction of its image as a nation.5 While some questions remain open, pointing the way towards inspiring directions of research,6 the situation as reported by Kapuściński remains no less significant seen in relation to that of James Barnor, whose activity as a photographer was burgeoning in Ghana during this heady landmark period of independence, at a time when the medium of photography seemed to hold out great promise.

In 1958, James Barnor was on the verge of emigrating to the United Kingdom, hoping to open a new chapter in the career that he had embarked upon a decade earlier. His apprenticeship began in 1947, when the country then called Gold Coast was still under

11

B E T WEEN AC CR A A ND LO ND O N : A PH OTO G R A PHI C A DV ENT U RE DAMARICE AMAO

Fig. 1 Kofi Baako, a minister in Kwame Nkrumah’s government between 1957 and 1966, Accra, late 1950s

1. Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun, London, Penguin, 2002, p. 9.

2. Ibid., p. 19. Kofi Baako (1926–1994) was officially designated “Minister of Information and Broadcasting” from 1957 to 1959, then Minister of Defence from 1961 to 1966.

3. Ibid., p. 16.

4. Ibid., p. 20.

5. In 1963 the Ghanaian government called upon Paul Strand to undertake a photographic campaign to create a portrait of the new Ghanaian society: Ghana: An African Portrait, Paul Strand and Basil Davidson, New York, Aperture, 1976. The Ministry of Information, via Ghana Information Services, directed by Kofi Baako, organised the publication of several illustrated works conceived to spotlight the young nation’s accomplishments, including Ghana is Born, London, Newman Neame Limited, Accra, Ghana Information Services, 1958.

6. For example, the encouragement of amateur photography within the scholastic establishments frequented by the native elite of the British colonial society.

“The Beginning: Collision, Ghana, 1958”:1 the discovery of this newly independent nation, the first country that he visited on the African continent, was an astonishing experience for the Polish reporter Rudyard Kapuściński. The light, the sun of Africa, was no doubt a factor. But that was not all. Sidestepping the usual snapshots that punctuate travel reports, Kapuściński was more intrigued by the flash of the camera wielded by the youngest minister in Kwame Nkrumah’s government, whom he met upon arrival: Kofi Baako (fig. 1), in charge of “schools, higher education, the press, radio, publishing houses, museums, and everything concerning science, culture, art and propaganda for the whole country”.2 The young man with the big portfolio was also an enthusiastic amateur photographer. As he confided to Kapuściński, “I have another hobby that I love even more: photography. I shoot photos everywhere, all the time. I have more than ten cameras. When I go into a shop and see a new model, I just have to buy it.”3 One night Baako took the Polish visitor on a walk through the streets of Accra: “We went out to take photos. With all of his cameras dangling from his body, Baako went from table to table. . . . He would look around, choosing the spots with the prettiest girls and asking them to pose, to laugh while his flash went off.” At the end of the night he would invite Kapuściński to “come over tomorrow and we’ll develop the photos”.4 The account, with its picturesque details, could simply be a reporter’s technique for adding “colour” to a travelogue, but in fact it neatly sums up all of the fascination elicited by a country under construction, and by the women and men, like Baako, who had patiently paved the way for its emancipation. By offering a portrait of his Ghanaian companion, Kapuściński sought to shed light on the enigma of the extraordinary destiny of this dynamic young minister of the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence. For any historian of the medium, the mention of the young man’s passion for photography is, here again, not just an anecdote. This devotion to photography at the highest level of the national government raises questions, prompting an investigation of the direct impact of this interest and its dissemination, in terms of custom and practice, within a society in the process of learning to adopt the language of modernity, while completing the political construction of its image as a nation.5 While some questions remain open, pointing the way towards inspiring directions of research,6 the situation as reported by Kapuściński remains no less significant seen in relation to that of James Barnor, whose activity as a photographer was burgeoning in Ghana during this heady landmark period of independence, at a time when the medium of photography seemed to hold out great promise.

In 1958, James Barnor was on the verge of emigrating to the United Kingdom, hoping to open a new chapter in the career that he had embarked upon a decade earlier. His apprenticeship began in 1947, when the country then called Gold Coast was still under

11

Fig. 2 One of the Ever Young Studio’s first clients, photographed between 1949 and 1953, before the studio was opened in Jamestown, Accra, vintage print on baryta paper, 14.8 × 11 cm, collection of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

7. See the interview with James Barnor by Hans Ulrich Obrist in this publication, p. 257.

British domination. After two years working with his cousin J. P. Dodoo, a well-known portrait photographer in Accra, Barnor opened his first outdoor “studio” (fig. 2), wielding the skills he had acquired in retouching and darkroom techniques. In a courtyard or on the street, seeking the best light, he would pose his customers in front of a hanging cloth backdrop (cat. 3).

Supplementing his on-the-job training, a phenomenon typical of the careers of artisanal photographers, he honed his sense of image working alongside Julius Aikins, another relative who apparently served as a technician for an agency, the West African Photographic Service.7 With money saved from his early work, in 1953 Barnor opened a studio near the famous lighthouse of Accra’s port district, Jamestown. Dubbed “Ever Young”, the studio still stands today, housing a different business. The neighbourhood, then considered the strategic heart of the nation’s capital, was home to a number of photography studios that had already been in operation for many years. Some were much frequented, like the Lutterodt family’s studio or the Deo Gratias (fig. 9), founded by J. K. Bruce Vanderpuije in 1922. Some 30 years after the opening of the latter, Ever Young revitalised the landscape of Ghanaian professional photography, which was gradually freeing itself from the constraints of colonial rule. More than a studio, it was a meeting place, open day and night, where Barnor welcomed a joyful crowd of visitors as well as a wide-ranging clientele representative of the diverse strata of a rapidly changing Ghanaian society eager to admire its own image on photographic paper: civil servants, dignitaries, yoga students, teachers, priests, musicians, secretaries, nurses, newlyweds . . . (fig. 3) Also during this period, the renaissance of the Ghanaian media landscape was offering new outlets for photographers. In 1950 Barnor began working, somewhat by chance, as a photographer for the newspaper Daily Graphic and a short while later for Drum, a South African anti-apartheid illustrated magazine that ran features on society, sport and politics. Alternating between his studio work and street photography in Accra, Barnor learned to compose visual narrations, to develop a subject for the needs of the printed press. Whether in Ghana or in Europe, this kind of photo reporting and illustration was the main source of livelihood for photographers in the 1950s. Barnor took photographs that provided unique insights into high-profile personalities like the famous boxer Roy Ankrah (fig. 4) and the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, the father of Ghanaian independence, and his associates of the CPP (Convention People’s Party). Recently rediscovered in Barnor’s archive, the striking self-portrait in a mirror (cat. 2), showing the photographer armed with his medium-format camera, reveals a masterly spatial construction while expressing the identity that he had successfully forged as a modern young African and professional photographer.

Fig. 3 Ethel Amarteifio, James Barnor’s cousin, Ever Young Studio, Jamestown, Accra, c. 1954

Even though Ever Young was a success, Barnor left Ghana for London in 1959, starting over nearly from scratch but motivated by the idea of finding new impetus for his career and diversifying his knowledge of the photographic art (fig. 5). His London network was limited, but his contact with the Drum team back in Accra enabled him to resume his activity as a news and magazine photographer, this time working for Drum’s London office.

The portraits of prominent figures in the Black community and colour shots of “cover girls” that he produced during this period have endured as icons of his oeuvre (fig. 6). At the time, London was establishing itself as a world capital of modernity, a city where the energy evident in the fields of music, visual art and fashion kept pace with the transformations taking place in society: multiculturalism, consumer prosperity, the liberalisation of morals and the challenges of decolonisation in a geopolitically divided world.

12

13

Fig. 2 One of the Ever Young Studio’s first clients, photographed between 1949 and 1953, before the studio was opened in Jamestown, Accra, vintage print on baryta paper, 14.8 × 11 cm, collection of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

7. See the interview with James Barnor by Hans Ulrich Obrist in this publication, p. 257.

British domination. After two years working with his cousin J. P. Dodoo, a well-known portrait photographer in Accra, Barnor opened his first outdoor “studio” (fig. 2), wielding the skills he had acquired in retouching and darkroom techniques. In a courtyard or on the street, seeking the best light, he would pose his customers in front of a hanging cloth backdrop (cat. 3).

Supplementing his on-the-job training, a phenomenon typical of the careers of artisanal photographers, he honed his sense of image working alongside Julius Aikins, another relative who apparently served as a technician for an agency, the West African Photographic Service.7 With money saved from his early work, in 1953 Barnor opened a studio near the famous lighthouse of Accra’s port district, Jamestown. Dubbed “Ever Young”, the studio still stands today, housing a different business. The neighbourhood, then considered the strategic heart of the nation’s capital, was home to a number of photography studios that had already been in operation for many years. Some were much frequented, like the Lutterodt family’s studio or the Deo Gratias (fig. 9), founded by J. K. Bruce Vanderpuije in 1922. Some 30 years after the opening of the latter, Ever Young revitalised the landscape of Ghanaian professional photography, which was gradually freeing itself from the constraints of colonial rule. More than a studio, it was a meeting place, open day and night, where Barnor welcomed a joyful crowd of visitors as well as a wide-ranging clientele representative of the diverse strata of a rapidly changing Ghanaian society eager to admire its own image on photographic paper: civil servants, dignitaries, yoga students, teachers, priests, musicians, secretaries, nurses, newlyweds . . . (fig. 3) Also during this period, the renaissance of the Ghanaian media landscape was offering new outlets for photographers. In 1950 Barnor began working, somewhat by chance, as a photographer for the newspaper Daily Graphic and a short while later for Drum, a South African anti-apartheid illustrated magazine that ran features on society, sport and politics. Alternating between his studio work and street photography in Accra, Barnor learned to compose visual narrations, to develop a subject for the needs of the printed press. Whether in Ghana or in Europe, this kind of photo reporting and illustration was the main source of livelihood for photographers in the 1950s. Barnor took photographs that provided unique insights into high-profile personalities like the famous boxer Roy Ankrah (fig. 4) and the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, the father of Ghanaian independence, and his associates of the CPP (Convention People’s Party). Recently rediscovered in Barnor’s archive, the striking self-portrait in a mirror (cat. 2), showing the photographer armed with his medium-format camera, reveals a masterly spatial construction while expressing the identity that he had successfully forged as a modern young African and professional photographer.

Fig. 3 Ethel Amarteifio, James Barnor’s cousin, Ever Young Studio, Jamestown, Accra, c. 1954

Even though Ever Young was a success, Barnor left Ghana for London in 1959, starting over nearly from scratch but motivated by the idea of finding new impetus for his career and diversifying his knowledge of the photographic art (fig. 5). His London network was limited, but his contact with the Drum team back in Accra enabled him to resume his activity as a news and magazine photographer, this time working for Drum’s London office.

The portraits of prominent figures in the Black community and colour shots of “cover girls” that he produced during this period have endured as icons of his oeuvre (fig. 6). At the time, London was establishing itself as a world capital of modernity, a city where the energy evident in the fields of music, visual art and fashion kept pace with the transformations taking place in society: multiculturalism, consumer prosperity, the liberalisation of morals and the challenges of decolonisation in a geopolitically divided world.

12

13

Fig. 4 Breakfast with Roy Ankrah, aka “The Black Flash”, Accra, c. 1952–53

Fig. 5 Letter from Jim Bailey, proprietor of Drum magazine, 15 September 1959

14

15

Fig. 4 Breakfast with Roy Ankrah, aka “The Black Flash”, Accra, c. 1952–53

Fig. 5 Letter from Jim Bailey, proprietor of Drum magazine, 15 September 1959

14

15

Fig. 7 Portrait of James Barnor at Medway College of Art, Rochester, Kent, c. 1960, vintage silver print, 16.1 × 21.1 cm, collection of Centre Pompidou MNAM-CCI, Paris

Beyond the lure of the British capital and any personal goals, Barnor’s departure echoed the global modernisation movement championed by the young Ghanaian nation and its leaders. To get an education, to acquire new knowledge and technical know-how were among the founding principles of the Ghanaian national (re)construction project, whose ideology was upheld in publications like The Roadmakers. Published in 1961 by the woman of letters Efua Sutherland and the photographer Willis Bell, with the support of the Ghana Information Services, the book combines text and images in a humanist style, its photographs enlivened by rhetoric adopting the vocabulary typical of national reconstruction: “We shall build the land with our strength,” and “We are acquiring new skills, we are acquiring new methods.”8

Fig. 6 Drum cover girl Rema Nelson, London, c. 1966, vintage print, 21.7× 16.5 cm

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8. Efua Sutherland and Willis E. Bell, The Roadmakers.

A Picture Book of Ghana, Accra, Newman Neame Limited, Ghana Information Services, 1961. See also James Barnor, the Roadmaker, Paris, Maison CF, Bristol, RRB Photobooks, 2021.

These included new methods in the fields of colour photography and graphic design that Barnor was keen to bring back to Ghana and share in the 1970s, after a stay in Britain focused on learning and exploring new facets of his profession. As soon as he arrived in London, he began taking evening classes in photographic techniques. From 1960 to 1963, he continued his education at Medway College in Kent, where he received theoretical training in imagery and the graphic arts (fig. 7). The latter was crucial for him, nourishing a new direction in his work towards applied photography (record album covers, calendars, advertisements, etc.), not to mention his role in the introduction of colour photography as a representative of the Agfa-Gevaert company. By the time he returned to Ghana, the demand for these photographic practices was gradually but steadily growing.

17

Fig. 7 Portrait of James Barnor at Medway College of Art, Rochester, Kent, c. 1960, vintage silver print, 16.1 × 21.1 cm, collection of Centre Pompidou MNAM-CCI, Paris

Beyond the lure of the British capital and any personal goals, Barnor’s departure echoed the global modernisation movement championed by the young Ghanaian nation and its leaders. To get an education, to acquire new knowledge and technical know-how were among the founding principles of the Ghanaian national (re)construction project, whose ideology was upheld in publications like The Roadmakers. Published in 1961 by the woman of letters Efua Sutherland and the photographer Willis Bell, with the support of the Ghana Information Services, the book combines text and images in a humanist style, its photographs enlivened by rhetoric adopting the vocabulary typical of national reconstruction: “We shall build the land with our strength,” and “We are acquiring new skills, we are acquiring new methods.”8

Fig. 6 Drum cover girl Rema Nelson, London, c. 1966, vintage print, 21.7× 16.5 cm

16

8. Efua Sutherland and Willis E. Bell, The Roadmakers.

A Picture Book of Ghana, Accra, Newman Neame Limited, Ghana Information Services, 1961. See also James Barnor, the Roadmaker, Paris, Maison CF, Bristol, RRB Photobooks, 2021.

These included new methods in the fields of colour photography and graphic design that Barnor was keen to bring back to Ghana and share in the 1970s, after a stay in Britain focused on learning and exploring new facets of his profession. As soon as he arrived in London, he began taking evening classes in photographic techniques. From 1960 to 1963, he continued his education at Medway College in Kent, where he received theoretical training in imagery and the graphic arts (fig. 7). The latter was crucial for him, nourishing a new direction in his work towards applied photography (record album covers, calendars, advertisements, etc.), not to mention his role in the introduction of colour photography as a representative of the Agfa-Gevaert company. By the time he returned to Ghana, the demand for these photographic practices was gradually but steadily growing.

17

Fig. 9 A procession during the Odwira festival outside the Deo Gratias Studio, Jamestown, Accra, 1976

Fig. 8 Printmaking in the darkroom, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1983, 16.4 × 21.8 cm, collection of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

9. See the essay by Isabella Seniuta in this publication, p. 277.

The belated recognition of Barnor’s work on the modern-day photographic scene and his recent inclusion in the history of photography have taken place, again only recently, through two main channels: a biographical re-evaluation on the one hand, plus a reading of his work from a post-colonial perspective, reflecting the current critical effort to draw attention to figures who have been rendered invisible in the history of art and photography. Pertinent and necessary, the latter point of view reveals Barnor’s photographs as visual testimonies crystallising the history of his country and more generally that of African independence. Similarly, his “pop” portraits of fashion models and figures from London’s Black community for Drum magazine constitute a collective portrait of the diaspora through which the affirmation of a Black identity was being cultivated, encompassing cultural empowerment and political consciousness. Today this dimension of Barnor’s work has won an especially strong reception among the young generations of photographers and artists who are discovering or rediscovering his work.9 At the heart of James’s oeuvre, other images regularly emerge from the massive archive, further enriching the many and various facets of his production, and serving in particular to highlight his efforts to create tension within the photographic medium itself. Barnor, who has never theorised about photography, questions in these works, as photographers often do, the intrinsic properties and functions of the image: what is photography?

A question that, without attempting by hasty association or anachronism to transform Barnor into a conceptual artist, he answers by embracing the polymorphous nature of the responses. He takes advantage of the resources offered by the camera, as demonstrated by the mechanisms deployed, among others, in his self-portraits. The one mentioned above, of Barnor presenting himself as a young modern photographer, can

18

be perceived as questioning the gap with a warped reality, in particular that of the physical space fragmented by the mirror’s reflection (cat. 2). This self-portrait also presents a mise en abyme of the photographic operation in which the centrality of the technical tool blots out the features of the operator even while manifesting his presence. As the Italian photographer Ugo Mulas put it in his well-known Verifiche (“Verifications”) series from 1970, “Perhaps there exists in this image . . . the obsession of the presence, the desire to see myself at the same time as I see, to participate, to be involved.”10 The studio images that Barnor produced, in Britain at Medway College or in Belgium at the Agfa-Gevaert studios, are other instants highlighting the elemental conditions of photography. A series of images dating from the 1960s,11 in which Barnor strove to compose a deconstructed portrait of his elegantly dressed model in the minimalist decor of the studio, puts forth a subtle visual commentary on the framing and the way it enables different perceptions and interpretations between the images.

Lastly, in another compelling photograph produced at Studio X23 in the 1970s (fig. 8, cat. 98), Barnor violates the space of the darkroom, normally invisible to outsiders, with a composition that unveils the secret aspect of the photographic revelation. The subject is seen in two prints, each representing the same portrait of a young woman in a profile shot that emphasises the subtle graphic line of her braids. One print is pinned to the wall, while the other is still soaking in a tray that certainly contains fixer, next to which is prominently positioned the inevitable timer. The staging of both the visual repetition and the process of reproducibility and revelation of the images makes a powerful and intriguing statement about the properties of analogue photography.

Just like his icon-portraits and photographs depicting Ghanaian social and political life, the images reveal the conditions of photography, its mechanisms and processes, shedding a singular light on James Barnor’s journey as a photographer. Between Ghana and the UK, and now Paris, where his archive is being brought to life,12 his oeuvre is the reflection of his thoughtful investigation of the here and now, as well as his constant confrontation with the challenges engendered by the practice of the photographic medium throughout his career – whose full scope remains to be explored in terms of the assertion of his identity as a photographer.

10. Ugo Mulas, “Verifica 2. L’Operazione Fotografica.

Autoritrato per Lee Friedlander” (“Verification 2.

The Photographic Operation. Self-portrait for Lee Friedlander”), 1970, reproduced in Qu’est ce que la Photographie? (“What is Photography?”) by Clément Chéroux and Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, Paris, Editions du Centre Pompidou, Editions Xavier Barral, 2015, p. 144.

11. The series, comprising ten prints, is now in the photography collections of the MNAM/ Centre Pompidou.

12. See the essay by Margaux Lavernhe in this publication, p. 21.

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Fig. 9 A procession during the Odwira festival outside the Deo Gratias Studio, Jamestown, Accra, 1976

Fig. 8 Printmaking in the darkroom, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1983, 16.4 × 21.8 cm, collection of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

9. See the essay by Isabella Seniuta in this publication, p. 277.

The belated recognition of Barnor’s work on the modern-day photographic scene and his recent inclusion in the history of photography have taken place, again only recently, through two main channels: a biographical re-evaluation on the one hand, plus a reading of his work from a post-colonial perspective, reflecting the current critical effort to draw attention to figures who have been rendered invisible in the history of art and photography. Pertinent and necessary, the latter point of view reveals Barnor’s photographs as visual testimonies crystallising the history of his country and more generally that of African independence. Similarly, his “pop” portraits of fashion models and figures from London’s Black community for Drum magazine constitute a collective portrait of the diaspora through which the affirmation of a Black identity was being cultivated, encompassing cultural empowerment and political consciousness. Today this dimension of Barnor’s work has won an especially strong reception among the young generations of photographers and artists who are discovering or rediscovering his work.9 At the heart of James’s oeuvre, other images regularly emerge from the massive archive, further enriching the many and various facets of his production, and serving in particular to highlight his efforts to create tension within the photographic medium itself. Barnor, who has never theorised about photography, questions in these works, as photographers often do, the intrinsic properties and functions of the image: what is photography?

A question that, without attempting by hasty association or anachronism to transform Barnor into a conceptual artist, he answers by embracing the polymorphous nature of the responses. He takes advantage of the resources offered by the camera, as demonstrated by the mechanisms deployed, among others, in his self-portraits. The one mentioned above, of Barnor presenting himself as a young modern photographer, can

18

be perceived as questioning the gap with a warped reality, in particular that of the physical space fragmented by the mirror’s reflection (cat. 2). This self-portrait also presents a mise en abyme of the photographic operation in which the centrality of the technical tool blots out the features of the operator even while manifesting his presence. As the Italian photographer Ugo Mulas put it in his well-known Verifiche (“Verifications”) series from 1970, “Perhaps there exists in this image . . . the obsession of the presence, the desire to see myself at the same time as I see, to participate, to be involved.”10 The studio images that Barnor produced, in Britain at Medway College or in Belgium at the Agfa-Gevaert studios, are other instants highlighting the elemental conditions of photography. A series of images dating from the 1960s,11 in which Barnor strove to compose a deconstructed portrait of his elegantly dressed model in the minimalist decor of the studio, puts forth a subtle visual commentary on the framing and the way it enables different perceptions and interpretations between the images.

Lastly, in another compelling photograph produced at Studio X23 in the 1970s (fig. 8, cat. 98), Barnor violates the space of the darkroom, normally invisible to outsiders, with a composition that unveils the secret aspect of the photographic revelation. The subject is seen in two prints, each representing the same portrait of a young woman in a profile shot that emphasises the subtle graphic line of her braids. One print is pinned to the wall, while the other is still soaking in a tray that certainly contains fixer, next to which is prominently positioned the inevitable timer. The staging of both the visual repetition and the process of reproducibility and revelation of the images makes a powerful and intriguing statement about the properties of analogue photography.

Just like his icon-portraits and photographs depicting Ghanaian social and political life, the images reveal the conditions of photography, its mechanisms and processes, shedding a singular light on James Barnor’s journey as a photographer. Between Ghana and the UK, and now Paris, where his archive is being brought to life,12 his oeuvre is the reflection of his thoughtful investigation of the here and now, as well as his constant confrontation with the challenges engendered by the practice of the photographic medium throughout his career – whose full scope remains to be explored in terms of the assertion of his identity as a photographer.

10. Ugo Mulas, “Verifica 2. L’Operazione Fotografica.

Autoritrato per Lee Friedlander” (“Verification 2.

The Photographic Operation. Self-portrait for Lee Friedlander”), 1970, reproduced in Qu’est ce que la Photographie? (“What is Photography?”) by Clément Chéroux and Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, Paris, Editions du Centre Pompidou, Editions Xavier Barral, 2015, p. 144.

11. The series, comprising ten prints, is now in the photography collections of the MNAM/ Centre Pompidou.

12. See the essay by Margaux Lavernhe in this publication, p. 21.

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BEHIND THE IMAGES: JAMES BARNOR’S ARCHIVE -WORLD MARGAUX LAVERNHE

“As for photography, the more I go in, the more I like it, the more I see the value.”´1

Fig. 1 Evelyn Abbew in 1954–56, glass plate negatives being viewed at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, February 2022

Hanging on the walls of the LUMA ARLES, James Barnor’s masterpieces command attention. Each shot appears as a fragment of the various worlds that the photographer has experienced and captured in images, from the beginning of his apprenticeship in 1947 through to the mature years of his career in the late 1980s. And yet, as he himself suggests, each photograph urges us to go further, to delve beyond the surface of the print on display, to “see the value” of these images that the compilation of the James Barnor archive, initiated in 2015, has reanchored in the context of their production, despite the spatio-temporal gap that separates us from those contexts. Exploring Barnor’s oeuvre thus always entails this inaugural plunge, this immersion in an underlying archival realm.

Behind each negative lies a myriad of interconnected stories, clarified by the words of a photographer-archivist, as well as the many strata of the social life2 depicted in images that, since their creation, have been in perpetual flux, appearing and reappearing under very different circumstances, culminating in their current reception. Given these shifts in perception, the challenge is to reconstitute their journeys, to highlight the paths they have followed and the way in which the latter have affected their aesthetic, historical or political scope.

The archive as archaeology

1. James Barnor interviewed by the author at his home in Brentford, London, 25 October 2021.

2. The concept of the “social life” of African art objects was first proposed by Igor Kopytoff in “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization As Process”, The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Arjun Appadurai (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 64–92. John Peffer then transposed it to African photography in “La diaspora des images de l’Afrique”, Multitudes, vol. 2, no. 53, 2013, pp. 47–58.

3. Telephone conversation between the author and James Barnor, 7 February 2022.

A young woman gazes up at the lens for just a moment, her hands plunged into a steel basin full of freshly developed portraits (cat. 8). Behind her, dozens of rolls of film hang on wires from the ceiling of the anteroom at the Ever Young Studio. It’s the mid-1950s.

Evelyn Abbew, a young nurse who has become the “queen mother” of a traditional community,3 is visiting her friend James Barnor, who recently opened his studio near the Jamestown Lighthouse, one of the oldest urbanised districts of Accra. The prints that the young woman is washing are her own portraits. The experimentation with embedded images was thus already a factor when, as part of the archival research, a batch of glass plates was digitised that reconfirm Abbew’s role as one of Barnor’s earliest muses (cat. 6; fig. 1). In a single glance, we see multiple iterations arrayed around this face, wresting it out of the anonymity of a lone image.

This example, among so many others, of visual mise en abyme attests to the vastness of a photographic archive whose images are in constant dialogue. These resonances are what gives the Barnor archive its first essential value: that of profusion. Even so, a great many cases of photos-within-a-photo can be found, hinting at the loss and dispersion inherent to any archive. For example, none of the original prints that Abbew is seen

21

BEHIND THE IMAGES: JAMES BARNOR’S ARCHIVE -WORLD MARGAUX LAVERNHE

“As for photography, the more I go in, the more I like it, the more I see the value.”´1

Fig. 1 Evelyn Abbew in 1954–56, glass plate negatives being viewed at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, February 2022

Hanging on the walls of the LUMA ARLES, James Barnor’s masterpieces command attention. Each shot appears as a fragment of the various worlds that the photographer has experienced and captured in images, from the beginning of his apprenticeship in 1947 through to the mature years of his career in the late 1980s. And yet, as he himself suggests, each photograph urges us to go further, to delve beyond the surface of the print on display, to “see the value” of these images that the compilation of the James Barnor archive, initiated in 2015, has reanchored in the context of their production, despite the spatio-temporal gap that separates us from those contexts. Exploring Barnor’s oeuvre thus always entails this inaugural plunge, this immersion in an underlying archival realm.

Behind each negative lies a myriad of interconnected stories, clarified by the words of a photographer-archivist, as well as the many strata of the social life2 depicted in images that, since their creation, have been in perpetual flux, appearing and reappearing under very different circumstances, culminating in their current reception. Given these shifts in perception, the challenge is to reconstitute their journeys, to highlight the paths they have followed and the way in which the latter have affected their aesthetic, historical or political scope.

The archive as archaeology

1. James Barnor interviewed by the author at his home in Brentford, London, 25 October 2021.

2. The concept of the “social life” of African art objects was first proposed by Igor Kopytoff in “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization As Process”, The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Arjun Appadurai (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 64–92. John Peffer then transposed it to African photography in “La diaspora des images de l’Afrique”, Multitudes, vol. 2, no. 53, 2013, pp. 47–58.

3. Telephone conversation between the author and James Barnor, 7 February 2022.

A young woman gazes up at the lens for just a moment, her hands plunged into a steel basin full of freshly developed portraits (cat. 8). Behind her, dozens of rolls of film hang on wires from the ceiling of the anteroom at the Ever Young Studio. It’s the mid-1950s.

Evelyn Abbew, a young nurse who has become the “queen mother” of a traditional community,3 is visiting her friend James Barnor, who recently opened his studio near the Jamestown Lighthouse, one of the oldest urbanised districts of Accra. The prints that the young woman is washing are her own portraits. The experimentation with embedded images was thus already a factor when, as part of the archival research, a batch of glass plates was digitised that reconfirm Abbew’s role as one of Barnor’s earliest muses (cat. 6; fig. 1). In a single glance, we see multiple iterations arrayed around this face, wresting it out of the anonymity of a lone image.

This example, among so many others, of visual mise en abyme attests to the vastness of a photographic archive whose images are in constant dialogue. These resonances are what gives the Barnor archive its first essential value: that of profusion. Even so, a great many cases of photos-within-a-photo can be found, hinting at the loss and dispersion inherent to any archive. For example, none of the original prints that Abbew is seen

21

Fig. 2 Double page from one of James Barnor’s photo albums containing clippings from the Daily Graphic dating from 1953 and 1956

22

23

Fig. 2 Double page from one of James Barnor’s photo albums containing clippings from the Daily Graphic dating from 1953 and 1956

22

23

Pursuing this idea of stemming the loss of archives, in 2020 the University of Ghana Institute of African Studies12 launched the “Heritage Photo Lab” project with the aim of collecting, from families, studios and institutions, sets of images dating from the 1950s through the 1970s and digitising them to compile a visual archive of that pivotal period in the country’s history. The project has brought to light the output of other studios, like Agfa Photos Fame in the town of Keta, founded by Frank Tagbor, a photographer whose visual vocabulary is not dissimilar to Barnor’s. Collectively, these new archives sketch out a cartography of the photography scene in southern Ghana for a generation that benefited from wider access to a profession that had previously been subject to restrictions under the colonial system.13 In parallel with the history of the studios, other names are associated with the emergence of local photojournalism (fig. 3).14

Archiving the ephemeral

Fig. 3 The journalists of the Ghanaian parliamentary press corps. Vintage print from the 1950s, 13.7 × 17.7 cm

4. Marian Nur Goni, “Préserver les archives photographiques africaines: pour une cartographie des acteurs et des initiatives”, Continents Manuscrits, no. 3, 2014, https://doi.org/10.4000/coma.437.

5. In particular the advent of colour photography.

6. Jennifer Bajorek, “Decolonizing the Archive.

The View from West Africa”, Aperture, no. 210, 2013, pp. 66–69.

7. On the story of the Lutterodts, who were active in Accra and elsewhere on the West African coast from the 1870s through the 1940s, see the work of Erin Haney, e.g. “The Modernist Lens of Lutterodt Studios”, in Elizabeth Harney and Ruth B. Phillips (eds.), Mapping Modernisms. Art, Indigeneity, Colonialism, Durham, Duke University Press, 2018, pp. 357–376.

8. J. K. Bruce Vanderpuije et al., Ghana Photos Memories, Paris, Filigranes, 2007. See also Isaac H. Bruce Vanderpuije, “What Photography Is Not, and Why It Needs Appreciation”, Fotota, 2018, https://fotota.hypotheses.org/5415.

9. Laurian R. Bowles, “Dress Politics and Framing Self in Ghana: The Studio Photographs of Felicia Abban”, African Arts, vol. 49, no. 4, 2016, pp. 48–57.

10. Group show, Ghana Freedom. Ghana Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia (catalogue of the exhibition, 11 May–24 November 2019), Cologne, Walther König, 2019, pp. 48–57.

11. “Ghana’s Independence Era Through the Lens of S. K. Pobee”, Africa Is a Country, 10 July 2013, https://africasacountry.com/2013/10/ghanasindependence-era-through-the-lens-of-s-k-pobee.

washing have survived intact. Despite its abundance – nearly 27,000 negatives divided among more than 4,000 contact sheets, plus a few hundred vintage prints – the archive is sometimes lacking, forever incomplete. Still, the excellent preservation of the Barnor collection is the result of a nearly maniacal effort to prevent dispersion. In this sense it stands as an exception within a West African photographic heritage that, for the generation that was active at the turning point of the independence movements, has remained fragmentary and mostly little-known,4 and in many cases quite simply lost. In Senegal, for example, overwhelmed by the technological breakthroughs of the early 1980s,5 many photographers got rid of their negatives by throwing them into the Senegal River, thus creating what Jennifer Bajorek has called a “submarine archive”.6 The opposite is true of the Barnor archive, which submerges rather than being submerged. By revealing the names of the photographers linked to his training and practice – J. P. D. Dodoo, Julius Aikins, William Ankrah and N. T. Clerk, among others – it opens the door onto an even broader history of photography in Ghana, a history that has yet to be written. Today we know the names of those who preceded Barnor’s generation in Accra, such as the Lutterodt7 and Bruce Vanderpuije8 families, who opened their studios in Jamestown in 1876 and 1922 respectively. But what about Barnor’s contemporaries?

Like the Ever Young, which opened in 1953, a number of studios were founded in the capital in the mid-1950s. Mention should be made of Felicia Abban (cat. 90), who set up shop in 19559 and whose prints were exhibited at the first Ghanaian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019,10 and of Samuel Kobina Pobee, whose Modern Photo Studio opened that same year and is still in operation today.11

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12. The project arose from a collaboration between the Kwabena Nketia archives (Accra, University of Ghana), the Goethe Institute (Accra) and the Alliance Française (Accra).

13. Jennifer Bajorek, Unfixed. Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa, Durham, Duke University Press, 2020.

14. This is the case, for example, of Gerald AnnanForson, whose photographs are on view in the United Arab Emirates this year as part of the independence celebrations; see Gerald Annan-Forson: Revolution and Image-making in Postcolonial Ghana (1979–1985), exhibition at the Sharjah Art Foundation in Sharjah, 7 March–7 July 2022. On the recruitment of local professionals by Ghanaian press organisations starting in the 1950s, see Nate Plageman, “‘Accra Is Changing, Isn’t It?’: Urban Infrastructure, Independence, and Nation in the Gold Coast’s Daily Graphic, 1954–57”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, 2010, pp. 137–159.

15. Interview with James Barnor by the author at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 13 December 2018.

16. J. Bajorek, 2020, op. cit.

17. Regarding this image, see Bianca Manu’s following essay.

18. Telephone conversation between James Barnor and the staff of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 4 February 2022.

“I had two lives. One, there was the studio, where you don’t move, and two, the outside life, with the camera, where you . . . move all the time. Because of that, you have to know the people who matter, to open your eyes and your ears to know what is happening.”15 The “two lives” that James Barnor led starting in 1952, the year marked by the beginning of his collaboration with the newspaper Daily Graphic, are representative of these evolutions. “Unfixed”, unstable, in motion: it is also in this sense that Jennifer Bajorek proposes to reconsider the inherent fixity of the photographic medium in light of its recent history on the African continent.16 Its intimate link with decolonisation made it the instrument of an uncertain movement, always open-ended, always inchoate.

The Barnor archive unto itself contains, like a framework, an intrinsic motif, the idea of perpetual construction. In its images, something is always coming into being.

Let us consider, for example, Barnor’s portrait of a man from 1958–59, shot at a low angle from behind.17 The man is photographing the as yet uncompleted Independence Arch that stands in the middle of Black Star Square, the memorial complex built by Kwame Nkrumah in Accra starting in 1957 (cat. 29). Shortly after this photograph was taken, that same arch would be crowned with a black star symbolising both the liberation of Ghana and the unification of the entire African continent (p. 108). Barnor captured the moment in its contingency, faithful to the subjective approach, at ground level – quite aptly summing up his knack for producing documents of historical value as though by coincidence. The composition also evinces the sense of community that Barnor’s photos helped to convey, creating, as is often the case, a dialogue between words and image. Here, the inscription “Accra Community Association” on the side of the bus is a felicitous extension of the values of the young Ghanaian nation: “Freedom and Justice” carved into the pediment of the monument. The radical perspective creates a tension, a forward momentum that enhances this impression of a nascent national movement. Through an effect of mise en abyme, the photographer and his camera become the agents of this fixing of the ephemeral.

This photograph is echoed by a lesser-known image adopting the same visual theme made after Barnor’s return to the United Kingdom in 1971–72. It shows a young woman crouching in front of a stack of metal tubes (cat. 53), which the photographer saw as an opportune improvised setting for a colour experiment. Despite the carefully posed look of this portrait, in which Barnor sought to reproduce the visual world of Drum, what catches the eye are the parallels with the construction materials of Nkrumah Circle.18 This highway interchange, which was part of Nkrumah’s large-scale urban development programmes of the early 1960s, was rebuilt several times under successive governments

25

Pursuing this idea of stemming the loss of archives, in 2020 the University of Ghana Institute of African Studies12 launched the “Heritage Photo Lab” project with the aim of collecting, from families, studios and institutions, sets of images dating from the 1950s through the 1970s and digitising them to compile a visual archive of that pivotal period in the country’s history. The project has brought to light the output of other studios, like Agfa Photos Fame in the town of Keta, founded by Frank Tagbor, a photographer whose visual vocabulary is not dissimilar to Barnor’s. Collectively, these new archives sketch out a cartography of the photography scene in southern Ghana for a generation that benefited from wider access to a profession that had previously been subject to restrictions under the colonial system.13 In parallel with the history of the studios, other names are associated with the emergence of local photojournalism (fig. 3).14

Archiving the ephemeral

Fig. 3 The journalists of the Ghanaian parliamentary press corps. Vintage print from the 1950s, 13.7 × 17.7 cm

4. Marian Nur Goni, “Préserver les archives photographiques africaines: pour une cartographie des acteurs et des initiatives”, Continents Manuscrits, no. 3, 2014, https://doi.org/10.4000/coma.437.

5. In particular the advent of colour photography.

6. Jennifer Bajorek, “Decolonizing the Archive.

The View from West Africa”, Aperture, no. 210, 2013, pp. 66–69.

7. On the story of the Lutterodts, who were active in Accra and elsewhere on the West African coast from the 1870s through the 1940s, see the work of Erin Haney, e.g. “The Modernist Lens of Lutterodt Studios”, in Elizabeth Harney and Ruth B. Phillips (eds.), Mapping Modernisms. Art, Indigeneity, Colonialism, Durham, Duke University Press, 2018, pp. 357–376.

8. J. K. Bruce Vanderpuije et al., Ghana Photos Memories, Paris, Filigranes, 2007. See also Isaac H. Bruce Vanderpuije, “What Photography Is Not, and Why It Needs Appreciation”, Fotota, 2018, https://fotota.hypotheses.org/5415.

9. Laurian R. Bowles, “Dress Politics and Framing Self in Ghana: The Studio Photographs of Felicia Abban”, African Arts, vol. 49, no. 4, 2016, pp. 48–57.

10. Group show, Ghana Freedom. Ghana Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia (catalogue of the exhibition, 11 May–24 November 2019), Cologne, Walther König, 2019, pp. 48–57.

11. “Ghana’s Independence Era Through the Lens of S. K. Pobee”, Africa Is a Country, 10 July 2013, https://africasacountry.com/2013/10/ghanasindependence-era-through-the-lens-of-s-k-pobee.

washing have survived intact. Despite its abundance – nearly 27,000 negatives divided among more than 4,000 contact sheets, plus a few hundred vintage prints – the archive is sometimes lacking, forever incomplete. Still, the excellent preservation of the Barnor collection is the result of a nearly maniacal effort to prevent dispersion. In this sense it stands as an exception within a West African photographic heritage that, for the generation that was active at the turning point of the independence movements, has remained fragmentary and mostly little-known,4 and in many cases quite simply lost. In Senegal, for example, overwhelmed by the technological breakthroughs of the early 1980s,5 many photographers got rid of their negatives by throwing them into the Senegal River, thus creating what Jennifer Bajorek has called a “submarine archive”.6 The opposite is true of the Barnor archive, which submerges rather than being submerged. By revealing the names of the photographers linked to his training and practice – J. P. D. Dodoo, Julius Aikins, William Ankrah and N. T. Clerk, among others – it opens the door onto an even broader history of photography in Ghana, a history that has yet to be written. Today we know the names of those who preceded Barnor’s generation in Accra, such as the Lutterodt7 and Bruce Vanderpuije8 families, who opened their studios in Jamestown in 1876 and 1922 respectively. But what about Barnor’s contemporaries?

Like the Ever Young, which opened in 1953, a number of studios were founded in the capital in the mid-1950s. Mention should be made of Felicia Abban (cat. 90), who set up shop in 19559 and whose prints were exhibited at the first Ghanaian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019,10 and of Samuel Kobina Pobee, whose Modern Photo Studio opened that same year and is still in operation today.11

24

12. The project arose from a collaboration between the Kwabena Nketia archives (Accra, University of Ghana), the Goethe Institute (Accra) and the Alliance Française (Accra).

13. Jennifer Bajorek, Unfixed. Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa, Durham, Duke University Press, 2020.

14. This is the case, for example, of Gerald AnnanForson, whose photographs are on view in the United Arab Emirates this year as part of the independence celebrations; see Gerald Annan-Forson: Revolution and Image-making in Postcolonial Ghana (1979–1985), exhibition at the Sharjah Art Foundation in Sharjah, 7 March–7 July 2022. On the recruitment of local professionals by Ghanaian press organisations starting in the 1950s, see Nate Plageman, “‘Accra Is Changing, Isn’t It?’: Urban Infrastructure, Independence, and Nation in the Gold Coast’s Daily Graphic, 1954–57”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, 2010, pp. 137–159.

15. Interview with James Barnor by the author at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 13 December 2018.

16. J. Bajorek, 2020, op. cit.

17. Regarding this image, see Bianca Manu’s following essay.

18. Telephone conversation between James Barnor and the staff of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 4 February 2022.

“I had two lives. One, there was the studio, where you don’t move, and two, the outside life, with the camera, where you . . . move all the time. Because of that, you have to know the people who matter, to open your eyes and your ears to know what is happening.”15 The “two lives” that James Barnor led starting in 1952, the year marked by the beginning of his collaboration with the newspaper Daily Graphic, are representative of these evolutions. “Unfixed”, unstable, in motion: it is also in this sense that Jennifer Bajorek proposes to reconsider the inherent fixity of the photographic medium in light of its recent history on the African continent.16 Its intimate link with decolonisation made it the instrument of an uncertain movement, always open-ended, always inchoate.

The Barnor archive unto itself contains, like a framework, an intrinsic motif, the idea of perpetual construction. In its images, something is always coming into being.

Let us consider, for example, Barnor’s portrait of a man from 1958–59, shot at a low angle from behind.17 The man is photographing the as yet uncompleted Independence Arch that stands in the middle of Black Star Square, the memorial complex built by Kwame Nkrumah in Accra starting in 1957 (cat. 29). Shortly after this photograph was taken, that same arch would be crowned with a black star symbolising both the liberation of Ghana and the unification of the entire African continent (p. 108). Barnor captured the moment in its contingency, faithful to the subjective approach, at ground level – quite aptly summing up his knack for producing documents of historical value as though by coincidence. The composition also evinces the sense of community that Barnor’s photos helped to convey, creating, as is often the case, a dialogue between words and image. Here, the inscription “Accra Community Association” on the side of the bus is a felicitous extension of the values of the young Ghanaian nation: “Freedom and Justice” carved into the pediment of the monument. The radical perspective creates a tension, a forward momentum that enhances this impression of a nascent national movement. Through an effect of mise en abyme, the photographer and his camera become the agents of this fixing of the ephemeral.

This photograph is echoed by a lesser-known image adopting the same visual theme made after Barnor’s return to the United Kingdom in 1971–72. It shows a young woman crouching in front of a stack of metal tubes (cat. 53), which the photographer saw as an opportune improvised setting for a colour experiment. Despite the carefully posed look of this portrait, in which Barnor sought to reproduce the visual world of Drum, what catches the eye are the parallels with the construction materials of Nkrumah Circle.18 This highway interchange, which was part of Nkrumah’s large-scale urban development programmes of the early 1960s, was rebuilt several times under successive governments

25

following the 1966 coup d’état that removed the leader from power. It thus has symbolic importance in the Accra cityscape, here again perceived through the lorgnette of the man who “just happened to be there at the time and followed”,19 and who in the course of his wanderings captured, in a transient state, sites that embody his country’s collective memory.

In addition to this global approach, it is also important to emphasise the material diversity of the Barnor archive. Although its core is made up of negatives and original prints, these artefacts appear alongside other media, lesser in number but just as crucial. Among the most fundamental archival objects, the albums compiled by Barnor in the privacy of his studios, for example, come down to us as first-hand attempts to create his own archive (fig. 2 and 5), offering valuable insights into the visual imagination that underpins the photographer’s own representations. In this sense, the albums play a role rather like the view of Studio X23 (cat. 99) showing, like a moodboard, how Barnor constantly changed22 the photographs that he chose to display to customers as a means of promoting his work. In this single image from 1983, all the phases of his career are summed up on one section of wall.

The architecture of an archive

Fig. 4 Part of the archive, vintage prints from the 1960s, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, February 2022

19. Interview with James Barnor by the author at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 13 December 2018.

20. Riason Naidoo, interview with Renée Mussai, “James Barnor, Ever Young”, Africa Is a Country, 11 July 2019, https://africasacountry.com/2019/11/james-barnorever-young.

21. Margaux Lavernhe, “‘Colour Is Important. We Have to Start Exporting Colour.’ James Barnor, passeur de couleurs entre Europe et Ghana”, Photographica, no. 3, October 2021, pp. 120–141.

The archiving of thousands of James Barnor’s images, a joint project by the photographer and the staff of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière that began in 2015, also falls under this theme of ongoing construction, combining a sense of the aleatoric with an effort to impose rational order. Renée Mussai, curator of the exhibition “Ever Young” hosted by Autograph ABP in London in 2010, which gave the photographer his first major exposure in Europe, recalls in these terms her discovery of Barnor’s archiveworld in 2009: “Such incredibly fascinating history, and culture, stored in an array of Tupperware, plastic bags, cardboard boxes, often still inside original transparent or brown paper negative pouches, with hand-written notes to contextualise, and – importantly – James’ voice and remarkable memory to give meaning and context to it all.”20 At the gallery, given the rudimentary state of the archive as it came pouring in, sometimes in batches of contact sheets, dated haphazardly or not at all, sometimes in batches of individual images (fig. 4), sometimes in suitcases containing hundreds of original prints and miscellaneous documents, the priority was to find a way of navigating this inundation of images, and ultimately to dematerialise the entire body of work in the form of a digital database.

Slowly, by trial and error, the archiving method took shape, developed, like the images themselves, in an organic, kinetic way, adapting to the challenges that arose in the course of a perpetually open-ended process. For example, would it be better to choose a principle of typological classification, distinguishing among the various materials and equipment used to produce the photographs, or to favour a chronological or thematic ordering, thus making the images’ materiality a secondary consideration?

Ultimately, the team decided to integrate all of these criteria, adopting a nomenclature that makes it possible to position each image within units – at once chronological (by decade), thematic (four themes were selected that characterise Barnor’s multiple photographic practices) and lastly material (by film format) – and to assemble a network encompassing all of the contact sheets.

The goal was not only to find a way of organising an archive, but also to be capable of interpreting its diversity. For example, it is interesting to observe what the transition from glass plates to 120 film in the mid-1950s, or the transition from the latter to 35 format in the 1970s, reveals about Barnor’s practice against the backdrop of the broader evolutions in the history of the photographic medium. Or to enable the quantitative assessment of the successive chapters in the photographer’s career and his choices in terms of technical experimentation. The adoption of colour is an essential case in point, which can be addressed from an overview of the archive as a whole: colour appears sporadically in the 1960s, reaches a peak in the early 1970s, when Barnor was a brand ambassador for Agfa-Gevaert, and then becomes less prominent later in the decade. It did not emerge as a consistent, predominant practice, overshadowing black and white, until the very end of the 1980s, a fact that lends perspective to the “colour revolution” sometimes associated with the photographer’s creative journey.21

26

Listening to the archive

22. The evolution of the Studio X23 wall is visible in many archive images and has been confirmed by the photographer when he was asked about this photo in London, 14 May 2021.

23. Candace M. Keller, “Visual Griots: Identity, Aesthetics, and the Social Roles of Portrait Photographers in Mali”, in Portraiture & Photography in Africa, John Peffer and Elisabeth L. Cameron (eds.), Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2013, pp. 363–405.

24. Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives, translated

by Thomas Scott–Railton, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013, p. 29.

25. James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, 19 May–24 October 2021.

26. The idea was inspired by Tina M. Campt’s visual process in Listening to Images, Durham, Duke University Press, 2017.

27. James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue, Serpentine North Gallery, London, 19 May–24 October 2021), Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Joseph Constable (eds.), Cologne, Walther König, London, Serpentine Galleries, 2021.

28. Conversation between the author and James Barnor, London, 13 May 2021.

29. See the work of Elizabeth Edwards on the physical and symbolic displacements inherent in the archiving process, e.g. in “Location, Location: A Polemic on Photographs and Institutional Practices”, Science Museum Group Journal, no. 7, 2017, https://doi.org/10.15180/170709.

The comprehension and analytical organisation of this critical mass of images would not have had the same scope without the direct assistance of James Barnor himself. This is a living, incarnate archive, primarily because – as described by Mussai – it resonates with the thousands of stories that the photographer associates with each of its components, fulfilling the role of “visual griot” that Candace Keller ascribed to his Malian contemporaries.23 As Arlette Farge comments, “An archive may not speak the truth, but it speaks of the truth . . . i.e. in its unique manner of exposing someone else’s Way of speaking.”24 Thus the photographer’s “way of speaking” is the irreplaceable agent for understanding his images, the prime gateway to their meaning. In May 2021, during the opening of his exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery in London,25 we listened to the images26 in his presence, as so often happens. Leafing through the catalogue created for the event,27 he lingered for a moment on a portrait of a young woman, identified as the secretary of a certain Sammy Tetteh, photographed in the 1970s when Barnor happened to be in Tetteh’s office (cat. 83). The image, which could obliquely evoke Man Ray’s portraits of Kiki de Montparnasse, incites reverie in its slight shift of perspective, isolating the woman’s face from its ambient reality. To return to Barnor’s “way of speaking”, resetting it in its original context, we learn that the photograph was born out of a chance encounter with this young woman, whose dazzlingly bright eyes, underlined by a stroke of kohl, and sculptural hairdo had caught the photographer’s attention.28 But for us, the hyperaestheticism of the portrait resides specifically in the exaltation of these two motifs. The initial intention thus provides a counterpoint to our own perception of the image 40 years later.

Listening to the archive also means being receptive to its coincidental interconnections. While it has often been demonstrated that amassing an archive means ordering and categorisation – distorting the initial logic of the storage methods improvised by the photographer depending on the situation29 – it also has the virtue of reconnecting the temporal strata of a life devoted to photography, probed and investigated like an archaeological site. At times this “excavation” makes it possible to reconstitute randomly dispersed biographical reference points. Among the women and men spotted from one decade to another is Sister Agoe, photographed at the Ever Young Studio in the 1950s (p. 188; cat. 63). But for a few details – for example, the seventies-style geometric earrings replacing the elegant pendant earrings worn in the earlier portrait – she reappears in exactly the same outfit c. 1972. The colour film with which Barnor was then experimenting also reveals the pink of her tailor-made dress, carefully preserved over the years. Her hands, clasped in an identical pose, are perhaps the only hints in the later image of the passage of time.

27

following the 1966 coup d’état that removed the leader from power. It thus has symbolic importance in the Accra cityscape, here again perceived through the lorgnette of the man who “just happened to be there at the time and followed”,19 and who in the course of his wanderings captured, in a transient state, sites that embody his country’s collective memory.

In addition to this global approach, it is also important to emphasise the material diversity of the Barnor archive. Although its core is made up of negatives and original prints, these artefacts appear alongside other media, lesser in number but just as crucial. Among the most fundamental archival objects, the albums compiled by Barnor in the privacy of his studios, for example, come down to us as first-hand attempts to create his own archive (fig. 2 and 5), offering valuable insights into the visual imagination that underpins the photographer’s own representations. In this sense, the albums play a role rather like the view of Studio X23 (cat. 99) showing, like a moodboard, how Barnor constantly changed22 the photographs that he chose to display to customers as a means of promoting his work. In this single image from 1983, all the phases of his career are summed up on one section of wall.

The architecture of an archive

Fig. 4 Part of the archive, vintage prints from the 1960s, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, February 2022

19. Interview with James Barnor by the author at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 13 December 2018.

20. Riason Naidoo, interview with Renée Mussai, “James Barnor, Ever Young”, Africa Is a Country, 11 July 2019, https://africasacountry.com/2019/11/james-barnorever-young.

21. Margaux Lavernhe, “‘Colour Is Important. We Have to Start Exporting Colour.’ James Barnor, passeur de couleurs entre Europe et Ghana”, Photographica, no. 3, October 2021, pp. 120–141.

The archiving of thousands of James Barnor’s images, a joint project by the photographer and the staff of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière that began in 2015, also falls under this theme of ongoing construction, combining a sense of the aleatoric with an effort to impose rational order. Renée Mussai, curator of the exhibition “Ever Young” hosted by Autograph ABP in London in 2010, which gave the photographer his first major exposure in Europe, recalls in these terms her discovery of Barnor’s archiveworld in 2009: “Such incredibly fascinating history, and culture, stored in an array of Tupperware, plastic bags, cardboard boxes, often still inside original transparent or brown paper negative pouches, with hand-written notes to contextualise, and – importantly – James’ voice and remarkable memory to give meaning and context to it all.”20 At the gallery, given the rudimentary state of the archive as it came pouring in, sometimes in batches of contact sheets, dated haphazardly or not at all, sometimes in batches of individual images (fig. 4), sometimes in suitcases containing hundreds of original prints and miscellaneous documents, the priority was to find a way of navigating this inundation of images, and ultimately to dematerialise the entire body of work in the form of a digital database.

Slowly, by trial and error, the archiving method took shape, developed, like the images themselves, in an organic, kinetic way, adapting to the challenges that arose in the course of a perpetually open-ended process. For example, would it be better to choose a principle of typological classification, distinguishing among the various materials and equipment used to produce the photographs, or to favour a chronological or thematic ordering, thus making the images’ materiality a secondary consideration?

Ultimately, the team decided to integrate all of these criteria, adopting a nomenclature that makes it possible to position each image within units – at once chronological (by decade), thematic (four themes were selected that characterise Barnor’s multiple photographic practices) and lastly material (by film format) – and to assemble a network encompassing all of the contact sheets.

The goal was not only to find a way of organising an archive, but also to be capable of interpreting its diversity. For example, it is interesting to observe what the transition from glass plates to 120 film in the mid-1950s, or the transition from the latter to 35 format in the 1970s, reveals about Barnor’s practice against the backdrop of the broader evolutions in the history of the photographic medium. Or to enable the quantitative assessment of the successive chapters in the photographer’s career and his choices in terms of technical experimentation. The adoption of colour is an essential case in point, which can be addressed from an overview of the archive as a whole: colour appears sporadically in the 1960s, reaches a peak in the early 1970s, when Barnor was a brand ambassador for Agfa-Gevaert, and then becomes less prominent later in the decade. It did not emerge as a consistent, predominant practice, overshadowing black and white, until the very end of the 1980s, a fact that lends perspective to the “colour revolution” sometimes associated with the photographer’s creative journey.21

26

Listening to the archive

22. The evolution of the Studio X23 wall is visible in many archive images and has been confirmed by the photographer when he was asked about this photo in London, 14 May 2021.

23. Candace M. Keller, “Visual Griots: Identity, Aesthetics, and the Social Roles of Portrait Photographers in Mali”, in Portraiture & Photography in Africa, John Peffer and Elisabeth L. Cameron (eds.), Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2013, pp. 363–405.

24. Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives, translated

by Thomas Scott–Railton, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013, p. 29.

25. James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, 19 May–24 October 2021.

26. The idea was inspired by Tina M. Campt’s visual process in Listening to Images, Durham, Duke University Press, 2017.

27. James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue, Serpentine North Gallery, London, 19 May–24 October 2021), Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Joseph Constable (eds.), Cologne, Walther König, London, Serpentine Galleries, 2021.

28. Conversation between the author and James Barnor, London, 13 May 2021.

29. See the work of Elizabeth Edwards on the physical and symbolic displacements inherent in the archiving process, e.g. in “Location, Location: A Polemic on Photographs and Institutional Practices”, Science Museum Group Journal, no. 7, 2017, https://doi.org/10.15180/170709.

The comprehension and analytical organisation of this critical mass of images would not have had the same scope without the direct assistance of James Barnor himself. This is a living, incarnate archive, primarily because – as described by Mussai – it resonates with the thousands of stories that the photographer associates with each of its components, fulfilling the role of “visual griot” that Candace Keller ascribed to his Malian contemporaries.23 As Arlette Farge comments, “An archive may not speak the truth, but it speaks of the truth . . . i.e. in its unique manner of exposing someone else’s Way of speaking.”24 Thus the photographer’s “way of speaking” is the irreplaceable agent for understanding his images, the prime gateway to their meaning. In May 2021, during the opening of his exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery in London,25 we listened to the images26 in his presence, as so often happens. Leafing through the catalogue created for the event,27 he lingered for a moment on a portrait of a young woman, identified as the secretary of a certain Sammy Tetteh, photographed in the 1970s when Barnor happened to be in Tetteh’s office (cat. 83). The image, which could obliquely evoke Man Ray’s portraits of Kiki de Montparnasse, incites reverie in its slight shift of perspective, isolating the woman’s face from its ambient reality. To return to Barnor’s “way of speaking”, resetting it in its original context, we learn that the photograph was born out of a chance encounter with this young woman, whose dazzlingly bright eyes, underlined by a stroke of kohl, and sculptural hairdo had caught the photographer’s attention.28 But for us, the hyperaestheticism of the portrait resides specifically in the exaltation of these two motifs. The initial intention thus provides a counterpoint to our own perception of the image 40 years later.

Listening to the archive also means being receptive to its coincidental interconnections. While it has often been demonstrated that amassing an archive means ordering and categorisation – distorting the initial logic of the storage methods improvised by the photographer depending on the situation29 – it also has the virtue of reconnecting the temporal strata of a life devoted to photography, probed and investigated like an archaeological site. At times this “excavation” makes it possible to reconstitute randomly dispersed biographical reference points. Among the women and men spotted from one decade to another is Sister Agoe, photographed at the Ever Young Studio in the 1950s (p. 188; cat. 63). But for a few details – for example, the seventies-style geometric earrings replacing the elegant pendant earrings worn in the earlier portrait – she reappears in exactly the same outfit c. 1972. The colour film with which Barnor was then experimenting also reveals the pink of her tailor-made dress, carefully preserved over the years. Her hands, clasped in an identical pose, are perhaps the only hints in the later image of the passage of time.

27

Fig. 5 Double page from one of James Barnor’s photo albums containing prints from the Ever Young Studio, 1954–59

28

29

Fig. 5 Double page from one of James Barnor’s photo albums containing prints from the Ever Young Studio, 1954–59

28

29

The social lives of images

Fig. 6 The Kolomashie Oko Ankrah posing with Kwame Nkrumah to support the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in the parliamentary elections of 1954 OPPOSITE PAGE: Fig. 7 Cover of the Ghana Evening News (18 January 1954) in which this image was published

30. Christine Barthe, “Move with a Camera”, in L. Carey-Thomas and J. Constable, op. cit., p. 38.

31. One of the CPP’s newspapers.

From one portrait of Sister Agoe to another, it’s not only a matter of biographical time; there are also radical changes in the way that images are produced, used and perceived.

The first photo, for example, is clearly representative of the most fashionable production modes of the 1950s, with its light halo borrowed from the tradition of the photographic medallion, which dates back to the 19th century. This look, found in abundance in Barnor’s vintage albums, exists alongside juxtapositions and copy-paste effects that, starting in the mid-1950s, heralded a visual modernity that reached its apogee in the sixties (fig. 5). The 16 × 21 centimetre format was no doubt designed to adorn a wall of a family home, unlike the highly canonical 13 × 9 centimetre postcard format, which was more commonly used in family albums or offered to friends. As for the portrait from the early 1970s, it is important to note that the “colour revolution”, although obvious and unremarkable to our modern-day eyes, at the time would have represented a considerable and very likely prohibitive expense for this young woman. Both of these images, in their current state, thus have a backstory that raises a number of questions. Why, for example, did the original print from the 1950s stay in the photographer’s archives?

Did he produce multiple copies? Or was the customer unable to pay for it? As for the portrait from the 1970s, were any prints made or did it remain in its unprocessed state as a positive transparency? Such questions show the importance of understanding the practices and purposes of images in the context of their production.

This is all the more true in that, as Christine Barthe has noted, the power of the Barnor archive derives from the fact that it “bears witness to a complete interweaving of personal and professional life, an ability to make pictures in all circumstances”.30 Due to this overlapping, it is often difficult to distinguish between images that were published and those that remained in their initial state as negatives. It is also difficult to know which ones were disseminated as part of the various projects undertaken by a photographer who was always looking to new horizons. For example, we know that a great many negatives produced for Drum in the 1950s were probably filed away piecemeal in the magazine’s archives, stored in South Africa. Certain copies of photographs of the independence movement that Barnor sent to the Black Star agency were similarly dispersed. At times, however, luck can be on the archivist’s side when, poring over the pages of the Ghana Evening News31, we come across a column featuring one of Barnor’s images (fig. 6 and 7).

This ambivalence between private and public archives is most strongly evident in his work from the 1960s, when Barnor lived the paradox specific to the diasporic experience: “home away from home”. The sweet, smiling face of Sarah Mills Okaikoi, a Ghanaian student who posed for the cover of the British-Caribbean magazine Flamingo in 1965, thus becomes an independent entity in Barnor’s archives (fig. 9). It can be found in what seem to be other shots taken for the magazine (fig. 8), as well as in more personal circumstances – a wedding, a party – where the now-familiar face appears among those of other young women of the West African community to which the photographer and his model both belonged. And mention must be made of the Drum “cover girls”, photographed in the privacy of London apartments or on outings in Kent, who as “DRUM’s Girls of the Month” became the muses of a British-African variant of the “Black is beautiful” theme emanating from Harlem. The portraits of models like Constance Mulondo, Marie Hallowi and Erlin Ibreck (p. 137–151) featured in the pages of the magazine demonstrate the publishers’ desire to depict the lives of these young women (fig. 10). They are held up as exemplary, according to an ideal of African beauty based on a celebration of their double identity, integrated in their adoptive society

30

31

The social lives of images

Fig. 6 The Kolomashie Oko Ankrah posing with Kwame Nkrumah to support the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in the parliamentary elections of 1954 OPPOSITE PAGE: Fig. 7 Cover of the Ghana Evening News (18 January 1954) in which this image was published

30. Christine Barthe, “Move with a Camera”, in L. Carey-Thomas and J. Constable, op. cit., p. 38.

31. One of the CPP’s newspapers.

From one portrait of Sister Agoe to another, it’s not only a matter of biographical time; there are also radical changes in the way that images are produced, used and perceived.

The first photo, for example, is clearly representative of the most fashionable production modes of the 1950s, with its light halo borrowed from the tradition of the photographic medallion, which dates back to the 19th century. This look, found in abundance in Barnor’s vintage albums, exists alongside juxtapositions and copy-paste effects that, starting in the mid-1950s, heralded a visual modernity that reached its apogee in the sixties (fig. 5). The 16 × 21 centimetre format was no doubt designed to adorn a wall of a family home, unlike the highly canonical 13 × 9 centimetre postcard format, which was more commonly used in family albums or offered to friends. As for the portrait from the early 1970s, it is important to note that the “colour revolution”, although obvious and unremarkable to our modern-day eyes, at the time would have represented a considerable and very likely prohibitive expense for this young woman. Both of these images, in their current state, thus have a backstory that raises a number of questions. Why, for example, did the original print from the 1950s stay in the photographer’s archives?

Did he produce multiple copies? Or was the customer unable to pay for it? As for the portrait from the 1970s, were any prints made or did it remain in its unprocessed state as a positive transparency? Such questions show the importance of understanding the practices and purposes of images in the context of their production.

This is all the more true in that, as Christine Barthe has noted, the power of the Barnor archive derives from the fact that it “bears witness to a complete interweaving of personal and professional life, an ability to make pictures in all circumstances”.30 Due to this overlapping, it is often difficult to distinguish between images that were published and those that remained in their initial state as negatives. It is also difficult to know which ones were disseminated as part of the various projects undertaken by a photographer who was always looking to new horizons. For example, we know that a great many negatives produced for Drum in the 1950s were probably filed away piecemeal in the magazine’s archives, stored in South Africa. Certain copies of photographs of the independence movement that Barnor sent to the Black Star agency were similarly dispersed. At times, however, luck can be on the archivist’s side when, poring over the pages of the Ghana Evening News31, we come across a column featuring one of Barnor’s images (fig. 6 and 7).

This ambivalence between private and public archives is most strongly evident in his work from the 1960s, when Barnor lived the paradox specific to the diasporic experience: “home away from home”. The sweet, smiling face of Sarah Mills Okaikoi, a Ghanaian student who posed for the cover of the British-Caribbean magazine Flamingo in 1965, thus becomes an independent entity in Barnor’s archives (fig. 9). It can be found in what seem to be other shots taken for the magazine (fig. 8), as well as in more personal circumstances – a wedding, a party – where the now-familiar face appears among those of other young women of the West African community to which the photographer and his model both belonged. And mention must be made of the Drum “cover girls”, photographed in the privacy of London apartments or on outings in Kent, who as “DRUM’s Girls of the Month” became the muses of a British-African variant of the “Black is beautiful” theme emanating from Harlem. The portraits of models like Constance Mulondo, Marie Hallowi and Erlin Ibreck (p. 137–151) featured in the pages of the magazine demonstrate the publishers’ desire to depict the lives of these young women (fig. 10). They are held up as exemplary, according to an ideal of African beauty based on a celebration of their double identity, integrated in their adoptive society

30

31

Fig. 8 Sarah Mills Okaikoi in front of her home in Balham, South London, c. 1965

Fig. 9 Sarah Mills Okaikoi, photographed in Balham Park, on the cover of the British-Caribbean magazine Flamingo, April 1965 collection of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

32

33

Fig. 8 Sarah Mills Okaikoi in front of her home in Balham, South London, c. 1965

Fig. 9 Sarah Mills Okaikoi, photographed in Balham Park, on the cover of the British-Caribbean magazine Flamingo, April 1965 collection of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

32

33

and at the same time embracing their African roots. In some cases, the commissioned photographs that made Barnor famous in sixties London arose from purely personal connections, later appropriated and editorialised from the magazine’s militant point of view – in other words, far from the way in which we can now perceive them individually as fashion portraits unmoored from their context.

Reinventing the archives

32. Tim Schlak, “Framing Photographs, Denying Archives: The Difficulty of Focusing on Archival Photographs”, Archival Science, vol. 8, no. 2, 2008, pp. 85–101.

33. On this topic, see Candace Keller, “Framed and Hidden Histories: West African Photography from Local to Global Contexts”, African Arts, vol. 47, no. 4, 2014, pp. 36–47.

34. On this concept, see Nathalie Heinich and Roberta Shapiro (eds.), De l’artification. Enquêtes sur le passage à l’art, Paris, Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2012.

35. See, for example, the documentary by Mariana Otero, Histoire d’un Regard, produced by Denis Freyd, Archipel 33, Archipel 35, 2020, 90 minutes. Diamantino Quintas appears in the film, presenting his prints of negatives by the photoreporter Gilles Caron.

Concerning this immersion in the stories surrounding the images, one might ask: does exhibiting the photographs inevitably negate the archive,32 in the sense of disregarding their backstories and considering only the versions offered for public display? The portfolio gathered by the LUMA Foundation incorporates this duplicity with no contradiction, since each photo is accompanied by an array of contextualising documents and original prints. However, given the many shifts of meaning brought about by removal from an archive for the purpose of an exhibition,33 it is important to conclude this reflection on the values of the James Barnor archive by drawing attention to the different stages that have led to the images’ reinvention today in the form of art prints, a process that could be described as artification.34 We should also have a thought for those who, in the shadow of the images, work on their present-day production. Here the archive becomes a realm of exploration, a changeable space from which are summoned forth new objects, new prints. It always starts with a process that is the opposite of archiving: selection. It is no longer a matter of considering the visual mass as a whole, but on the contrary of extracting its strongest components. This process ceaselessly reinvents Barnor’s original production, alternating, for each new project, familiar images with previously unseen shots. In the present catalogue, for example, Barnor’s signature photographs, like his Baby on All Fours (cat. 3) or the back of the champion boxer Muhammad Ali gearing up for his bout with Brian London in 1966 (cat. 38), appear alongside new proposals, like the portrait of a mother gazing tenderly at her baby, who in turn is looking the viewer straight in the eye through the lens (cat. 71), or the shot of young boys climbing up palm trees to knock down coconuts (cat. 67). One of the criteria for these selections was to offer a representative overview of Barnor’s production in all its diversity, even though the curators’ tastes and intentions prevailed at times over this goal.

The making of the iconic, in the sense that the process brings images into the sphere of art history, then continues in the darkroom. Since 2017 the production of prints has been entrusted to the Diamantino Quintas laboratory in the Paris suburb of Bagnolet, which works exclusively in analogue and has produced prints for many of the biggest names in the history of 20th-century photography.35 An important point in connection with Barnor is the decision, made jointly between the photographer and the gallery, never to reframe the negatives. In some cases this leads to noticeable discrepancies in relation to the prints that Barnor made in the course of his career, as evidenced by certain contact sheets that bear his own annotations indicating how he wanted them to be cropped. As a result, elements external to a portrait sometimes appear in the frame, like the boxes of Ilford paper stacked up in a corner of the platform at the Ever Young Studio (cat. 9). The editorial choices have had less effect on the treatment of contrasts, the depth of the blacks and the balance of the lighter shades, the hallmark of Barnor’s style. To obtain the final prints, Quintas and his team work with multiple intermediate versions that constitute different reinterpretations of the images, rather like a pianist playing a piece over and over to arrive at an ideal version, the one that does the most

34

Fig. 10 Constance Mulondo in the pages of the Nigerian edition of Drum, August 1967.

35

and at the same time embracing their African roots. In some cases, the commissioned photographs that made Barnor famous in sixties London arose from purely personal connections, later appropriated and editorialised from the magazine’s militant point of view – in other words, far from the way in which we can now perceive them individually as fashion portraits unmoored from their context.

Reinventing the archives

32. Tim Schlak, “Framing Photographs, Denying Archives: The Difficulty of Focusing on Archival Photographs”, Archival Science, vol. 8, no. 2, 2008, pp. 85–101.

33. On this topic, see Candace Keller, “Framed and Hidden Histories: West African Photography from Local to Global Contexts”, African Arts, vol. 47, no. 4, 2014, pp. 36–47.

34. On this concept, see Nathalie Heinich and Roberta Shapiro (eds.), De l’artification. Enquêtes sur le passage à l’art, Paris, Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2012.

35. See, for example, the documentary by Mariana Otero, Histoire d’un Regard, produced by Denis Freyd, Archipel 33, Archipel 35, 2020, 90 minutes. Diamantino Quintas appears in the film, presenting his prints of negatives by the photoreporter Gilles Caron.

Concerning this immersion in the stories surrounding the images, one might ask: does exhibiting the photographs inevitably negate the archive,32 in the sense of disregarding their backstories and considering only the versions offered for public display? The portfolio gathered by the LUMA Foundation incorporates this duplicity with no contradiction, since each photo is accompanied by an array of contextualising documents and original prints. However, given the many shifts of meaning brought about by removal from an archive for the purpose of an exhibition,33 it is important to conclude this reflection on the values of the James Barnor archive by drawing attention to the different stages that have led to the images’ reinvention today in the form of art prints, a process that could be described as artification.34 We should also have a thought for those who, in the shadow of the images, work on their present-day production. Here the archive becomes a realm of exploration, a changeable space from which are summoned forth new objects, new prints. It always starts with a process that is the opposite of archiving: selection. It is no longer a matter of considering the visual mass as a whole, but on the contrary of extracting its strongest components. This process ceaselessly reinvents Barnor’s original production, alternating, for each new project, familiar images with previously unseen shots. In the present catalogue, for example, Barnor’s signature photographs, like his Baby on All Fours (cat. 3) or the back of the champion boxer Muhammad Ali gearing up for his bout with Brian London in 1966 (cat. 38), appear alongside new proposals, like the portrait of a mother gazing tenderly at her baby, who in turn is looking the viewer straight in the eye through the lens (cat. 71), or the shot of young boys climbing up palm trees to knock down coconuts (cat. 67). One of the criteria for these selections was to offer a representative overview of Barnor’s production in all its diversity, even though the curators’ tastes and intentions prevailed at times over this goal.

The making of the iconic, in the sense that the process brings images into the sphere of art history, then continues in the darkroom. Since 2017 the production of prints has been entrusted to the Diamantino Quintas laboratory in the Paris suburb of Bagnolet, which works exclusively in analogue and has produced prints for many of the biggest names in the history of 20th-century photography.35 An important point in connection with Barnor is the decision, made jointly between the photographer and the gallery, never to reframe the negatives. In some cases this leads to noticeable discrepancies in relation to the prints that Barnor made in the course of his career, as evidenced by certain contact sheets that bear his own annotations indicating how he wanted them to be cropped. As a result, elements external to a portrait sometimes appear in the frame, like the boxes of Ilford paper stacked up in a corner of the platform at the Ever Young Studio (cat. 9). The editorial choices have had less effect on the treatment of contrasts, the depth of the blacks and the balance of the lighter shades, the hallmark of Barnor’s style. To obtain the final prints, Quintas and his team work with multiple intermediate versions that constitute different reinterpretations of the images, rather like a pianist playing a piece over and over to arrive at an ideal version, the one that does the most

34

Fig. 10 Constance Mulondo in the pages of the Nigerian edition of Drum, August 1967.

35

Fig. 11 Tracking forms for James Barnor modern prints at Diamantino Quintas’s laboratory in Bagnolet, 2019–22

36

37

Fig. 11 Tracking forms for James Barnor modern prints at Diamantino Quintas’s laboratory in Bagnolet, 2019–22

36

37

justice to the composer’s original score (fig. 11). These meticulous manipulations make it possible, for example, to reemphasise, as after the restoration of a sculpture, the prominences of Peter Dodoo’s body in a yoga pose (cat. 18) the way in which the spotlight that Barnor shone on his model brings out the top of the torso and tapers the legs.

The spotting phase, carried out by Marie-Pierre Bride, working by hand like a painting restorer, is also a necessity for perfecting the result.

The procedure differs slightly for colour. For this portfolio, the colour photographs were digitally processed by Boris Gayrard at the Picto laboratory in Paris. In this project, the colour negatives were the medium that suffered the most alteration since their original production, due to the climate conditions in Africa and the instability of the chemicals (fig. 12). Consequently, a considerable digital retouching effort was needed to produce, for example, the portrait of Sophia Salomon leaning on a car (cat. 56). The final result seeks to render visually the chromatic experience that Barnor wanted to capture, the shades of green running through the patterns of her dress, the two cars visible in the frame and the blurred vegetation in the background, the warm undertones of her skin, the satiny texture of her clothing.

All of these stages, culminating in the framing of the prints, transfigure the archive images, the raw material, into art objects, catalysing their aesthetic power and, strictly speaking, opening a new chapter in their journey. More than a mere epilogue, the process extends the lifespan of the photographs indefinitely.

An archive in the making

Fig. 12 Modern contact sheet of colour negatives dating from the early 1970s before processing (detail), 24 × 30 cm

38

36. Some have recently been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris), following the first acquisitions by the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) in 2012 and 2021 and later by the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques-Chirac (Paris) in 2016.

37. A number of exhibitions in Africa of Barnor’s images must however be mentioned, in particular the retrospective devoted to his work at the Nubuke Foundation in Accra from 23 November 2019 to 10 May 2020.

38. www.jamesbarnor.org 39. Interview with James Barnor by the author at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 20 June 2019.

40. Expression freely inspired by the online event Portraits for the Future: A Celebration of James Barnor hosted by the Serpentine North Gallery in preparation for the exhibition, 31 March 2021.

41. On this topic see the article by Isabella Seniuta elsewhere in this book, p. 277.

A diverse, versatile material par excellence, unfolding into thousands of embedded stories, transformable into multiple versions, from press photos to art prints, the archive emerges at the end of this reflection as the interface that will definitively place James Barnor’s images within a transcontinental landscape. Their current existence in Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic, from their production in the finest laboratories to their exhibition at LUMA ARLES, not to mention their acquisition by the world’s most prestigious artistic institutions,36 raises the question of the archive’s destiny. While their international dissemination follows the circulatory pattern, always in motion, that shaped their initial production, the possibility of housing the archive in Ghana remains an open question.37 The James Barnor Foundation38 was founded in 2019, headed by the photographer himself, who then selected members from Ghana, the UK and France, the better to ensure the future of this unique archive by bolstering the links between these three centres of activity. One of the organisation’s first actions was to launch a photography prize to be awarded to a photographer from the African continent. In this way, the constitution of the archive fulfils its ultimate vocation as envisioned by the photographer, namely sharing and giving: “Archives, you have to keep them all! Because it will even be needed to teach.”39 This is an archive for the future,40 a testament for generations of photographers yet to come.41

39

justice to the composer’s original score (fig. 11). These meticulous manipulations make it possible, for example, to reemphasise, as after the restoration of a sculpture, the prominences of Peter Dodoo’s body in a yoga pose (cat. 18) the way in which the spotlight that Barnor shone on his model brings out the top of the torso and tapers the legs.

The spotting phase, carried out by Marie-Pierre Bride, working by hand like a painting restorer, is also a necessity for perfecting the result.

The procedure differs slightly for colour. For this portfolio, the colour photographs were digitally processed by Boris Gayrard at the Picto laboratory in Paris. In this project, the colour negatives were the medium that suffered the most alteration since their original production, due to the climate conditions in Africa and the instability of the chemicals (fig. 12). Consequently, a considerable digital retouching effort was needed to produce, for example, the portrait of Sophia Salomon leaning on a car (cat. 56). The final result seeks to render visually the chromatic experience that Barnor wanted to capture, the shades of green running through the patterns of her dress, the two cars visible in the frame and the blurred vegetation in the background, the warm undertones of her skin, the satiny texture of her clothing.

All of these stages, culminating in the framing of the prints, transfigure the archive images, the raw material, into art objects, catalysing their aesthetic power and, strictly speaking, opening a new chapter in their journey. More than a mere epilogue, the process extends the lifespan of the photographs indefinitely.

An archive in the making

Fig. 12 Modern contact sheet of colour negatives dating from the early 1970s before processing (detail), 24 × 30 cm

38

36. Some have recently been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris), following the first acquisitions by the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) in 2012 and 2021 and later by the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques-Chirac (Paris) in 2016.

37. A number of exhibitions in Africa of Barnor’s images must however be mentioned, in particular the retrospective devoted to his work at the Nubuke Foundation in Accra from 23 November 2019 to 10 May 2020.

38. www.jamesbarnor.org 39. Interview with James Barnor by the author at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 20 June 2019.

40. Expression freely inspired by the online event Portraits for the Future: A Celebration of James Barnor hosted by the Serpentine North Gallery in preparation for the exhibition, 31 March 2021.

41. On this topic see the article by Isabella Seniuta elsewhere in this book, p. 277.

A diverse, versatile material par excellence, unfolding into thousands of embedded stories, transformable into multiple versions, from press photos to art prints, the archive emerges at the end of this reflection as the interface that will definitively place James Barnor’s images within a transcontinental landscape. Their current existence in Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic, from their production in the finest laboratories to their exhibition at LUMA ARLES, not to mention their acquisition by the world’s most prestigious artistic institutions,36 raises the question of the archive’s destiny. While their international dissemination follows the circulatory pattern, always in motion, that shaped their initial production, the possibility of housing the archive in Ghana remains an open question.37 The James Barnor Foundation38 was founded in 2019, headed by the photographer himself, who then selected members from Ghana, the UK and France, the better to ensure the future of this unique archive by bolstering the links between these three centres of activity. One of the organisation’s first actions was to launch a photography prize to be awarded to a photographer from the African continent. In this way, the constitution of the archive fulfils its ultimate vocation as envisioned by the photographer, namely sharing and giving: “Archives, you have to keep them all! Because it will even be needed to teach.”39 This is an archive for the future,40 a testament for generations of photographers yet to come.41

39

CA P T U RIN G P OTENTI A L : A B R I EF H I S TO RY O F G H A N A’ S P R O G R E S S BIANCA MANU

1. The slogan of the Convention People’s Party (CPP).

CPP was founded by Kwame Nkrumah in June 1949 to attain national self-governance.

2. Full Independence Speech of Kwame Nkrumah, (2020), www.ghanaianmuseum.com/ full-independence-speech-of-kwame-nkrumah/ 3. Harcourt Fuller, Building the Ghanaian Nation-State: Kwame Nkrumah’s Symbolic Nationalism, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 242.

A man plants himself on the earth with legs rooted like yams, hips pivoted towards a monument (fig. 2 and 3; cat. 29). In contemplation, he becomes engrossed. He contorts his body to accommodate a perspective beyond his scale, legs inclining backwards to allow for clarity. There is harmony in vision: to see the sight beyond the barrier. All eyes are synchronised: bus headlights to the left, the man pictured centre, and James Barnor behind his camera. The stone spectacular is Black Star Gate, headlined with AD 1957 and inscribed with the national proverb Freedom and Justice.

The architectural memorial was commissioned by Kwame Nkrumah, the founding prime minister (1957–60) and president (1960–66) of the Republic of Ghana when it became the first Sub-Saharan country to gain independence from British colonialism.

The magnitude of the moment reverberated internationally. It attracted Diaspora and Pan Africanists who wanted to revel in the attainment of African emancipation. Barnor captures the zeitgeist of the time, recording an African American friend as he stands in surprise. The moment illustrates the desire to document Ghana’s new beginning. The monument made liberation attainable by translating the intangible feeling of hope and promise into a visible physical structure. It communicated explicitly to the nation, and beyond that, it was moving “forward ever, backward never”1, marking a new chapter in its history.

To announce independence, Nkrumah explicitly declared: “We are going to demonstrate to the world, to the other nations, that we are prepared to lay our foundation – our own African personality.”2 Nkrumah was fervent in honouring this oath through the rapid construction of new infrastructure, urban planning, buildings and monuments.

There was a concerted effort towards galvanising the nation with this new imagery.

Strategically, it also served as political propaganda to increase the Convention People’s Party (CPP) popularity. Harcourt Fuller observes that “the Nkrumah government preferred to construct monuments that broke away from the colonial past and emphasised Ghana’s newfound freedom and nationhood.”3 It meant creating a new identity and distancing from British imperialism and symbolism. In 1957, “the new Ghanaian parliament rejected a plan for the British government to present a special statue to Ghana to honour its attainment of independence. The statue was to be a design of Queen Elizabeth II holding Ghana’s Black Star symbol in her outstretched right hand. Instead, the Cabinet chose a ‘Mother Ghana’ design, holding a flaming torch in her right hand.4 The preference for a monument that did not reference Britain shows that Ghana was fashioning an identity that looked forwards to modernity. Nkrumah’s administration celebrated national and political achievement through modernist symbolism as a show of ideological advancement.

41

CA P T U RIN G P OTENTI A L : A B R I EF H I S TO RY O F G H A N A’ S P R O G R E S S BIANCA MANU

1. The slogan of the Convention People’s Party (CPP).

CPP was founded by Kwame Nkrumah in June 1949 to attain national self-governance.

2. Full Independence Speech of Kwame Nkrumah, (2020), www.ghanaianmuseum.com/ full-independence-speech-of-kwame-nkrumah/ 3. Harcourt Fuller, Building the Ghanaian Nation-State: Kwame Nkrumah’s Symbolic Nationalism, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 242.

A man plants himself on the earth with legs rooted like yams, hips pivoted towards a monument (fig. 2 and 3; cat. 29). In contemplation, he becomes engrossed. He contorts his body to accommodate a perspective beyond his scale, legs inclining backwards to allow for clarity. There is harmony in vision: to see the sight beyond the barrier. All eyes are synchronised: bus headlights to the left, the man pictured centre, and James Barnor behind his camera. The stone spectacular is Black Star Gate, headlined with AD 1957 and inscribed with the national proverb Freedom and Justice.

The architectural memorial was commissioned by Kwame Nkrumah, the founding prime minister (1957–60) and president (1960–66) of the Republic of Ghana when it became the first Sub-Saharan country to gain independence from British colonialism.

The magnitude of the moment reverberated internationally. It attracted Diaspora and Pan Africanists who wanted to revel in the attainment of African emancipation. Barnor captures the zeitgeist of the time, recording an African American friend as he stands in surprise. The moment illustrates the desire to document Ghana’s new beginning. The monument made liberation attainable by translating the intangible feeling of hope and promise into a visible physical structure. It communicated explicitly to the nation, and beyond that, it was moving “forward ever, backward never”1, marking a new chapter in its history.

To announce independence, Nkrumah explicitly declared: “We are going to demonstrate to the world, to the other nations, that we are prepared to lay our foundation – our own African personality.”2 Nkrumah was fervent in honouring this oath through the rapid construction of new infrastructure, urban planning, buildings and monuments.

There was a concerted effort towards galvanising the nation with this new imagery.

Strategically, it also served as political propaganda to increase the Convention People’s Party (CPP) popularity. Harcourt Fuller observes that “the Nkrumah government preferred to construct monuments that broke away from the colonial past and emphasised Ghana’s newfound freedom and nationhood.”3 It meant creating a new identity and distancing from British imperialism and symbolism. In 1957, “the new Ghanaian parliament rejected a plan for the British government to present a special statue to Ghana to honour its attainment of independence. The statue was to be a design of Queen Elizabeth II holding Ghana’s Black Star symbol in her outstretched right hand. Instead, the Cabinet chose a ‘Mother Ghana’ design, holding a flaming torch in her right hand.4 The preference for a monument that did not reference Britain shows that Ghana was fashioning an identity that looked forwards to modernity. Nkrumah’s administration celebrated national and political achievement through modernist symbolism as a show of ideological advancement.

41

Fig. 1 An African American tourist photographing the statue of Kwame Nkrumah, Accra, c. 1958–59

42

Fig. 2 An African American tourist photographing the Independence Monument before the addition of the black star, Accra, c. 1958–59

43

Fig. 1 An African American tourist photographing the statue of Kwame Nkrumah, Accra, c. 1958–59

42

Fig. 2 An African American tourist photographing the Independence Monument before the addition of the black star, Accra, c. 1958–59

43

4. Janet B. Hess, Art and Architecture in Postcolonial Africa, Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006, p. 30 and note 75, chapter 1, p. 184; Cabinet Minutes, 14 May, 30 July and 29 October 1957.

5. Fuller, p. 242.

6. Roger A. Davidson, “A Question of Freedom: African Americans and Ghanaian Independence”, Negro History Bulletin, vol. 60, no. 3, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, 1997, pp. 6–12, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44177269.

7. The black star displayed on the Ghanaian flag became a symbol of Pan-Africanism and anti-colonialism.

The realisation of Ghana’s new identity was a coordinated effort comprised of selected government departments. According to Fuller, the National Commission on Culture, the Town and Country Planning (Accra) Department, the Ministry of Local Government, and the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) were the deciding powers who dictated what Ghana’s newfound nationhood would look like. Their efforts led to Independence Arch, a statue of Dr J.B. Danquah at Danquah Circle, and Nkrumah’s statue at Parliament House (fig. 1), amongst others.5 They created PanAfrican iconography that resonated across the continent and internationally, especially in America.

Ghana’s trajectory was a blueprint for African Americans ardently fighting for equity during the civil rights movement (1954–68). Visual language was a powerful tool to motivate Black Americans, notably because they held few politically influential posts during this period; “a primary outlet for political opinions was the African American press – the United Negro Press (UNP) – and the black newspapers that thrived in almost every American city. These newspapers served as the sounding posts for black opinions. They provided a global information system for African Americans, who used the black press to stay abreast of worldwide developments that affected Africa and the Diaspora.”6 During this period, Ghana shared front-page coverage with the racial violence of the South.

The visual contrast between Ghana’s emancipation and America’s civil unrest created a spectrum to measure progress. Ghana represented the positive possibilities of a new existence through emerging infrastructure, monuments and modernist architecture, while America was in contrast with images of disorder, riots and civil rights plights.

While visuals of Nkrumah and independence monuments were inspirational and motivational, the stark difference also exacerbated the tension between Eisenhower’s America and liberal African Americans.

Whilst James Barnor’s photography and the efforts of the ministry of foreign affairs successfully exported Ghana’s new identity overseas, James Barnor recollects a more nuanced reception at home. He remembers public and political dissent at the initial presentation of Black Star Gate. Questions arose on whether it was a befitting encapsulation of independence. The disagreement was mainly about the aesthetics of the monument, which some felt were underwhelming. It also garnered concern for its high cost in relation to its minimalist appearance. The modernist structure was crowned with a black star to satiate the public and settle speculation.7 Today, it stands as an emblem of African liberty. Barnor’s testimonies grant an intimate insight into the conflicting process of nation-building; despite self-assured declarations from Nkrumah to create a new African personality, the reality was precarious. Differences in opinion marred the attainment of modernity within Ghana, causing friction locally and globally. Eventually, these tensions led to the coup d’état of the civilian government led by Kwame Nkrumah in 1966.

The early years of Ghana’s independence are often presented with a gloss that hides the blemishes of resentment that prompted Nkrumah’s overthrow. Barnor’s accounts dissolve these assumptions and reveal the underlying tension. The blend of Barnor’s photographic archive complemented by his narratives makes his portfolio outstanding because he recolours events with subtleties that have faded through time. This process is the elixir that makes him ever young; he is consistently called on to time travel. It is why Barnor speaks of being disheartened “when Autograph ABP temporarily stored all my negatives in air-conditioned rooms at Rivington Place, to curate the exhibition in 2010, I felt that my soul was gone. So, I called for them. And since I got my negatives

44

Fig. 3 Extract of an album made my James Barnor in the 1950s showing buildings in Station Road (the commercial area of Accra), an African American tourist photographing the Independence Monument and a self-portrait of James Barnor taken at the West African Drug Company, Accra, 1952

45

4. Janet B. Hess, Art and Architecture in Postcolonial Africa, Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006, p. 30 and note 75, chapter 1, p. 184; Cabinet Minutes, 14 May, 30 July and 29 October 1957.

5. Fuller, p. 242.

6. Roger A. Davidson, “A Question of Freedom: African Americans and Ghanaian Independence”, Negro History Bulletin, vol. 60, no. 3, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, 1997, pp. 6–12, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44177269.

7. The black star displayed on the Ghanaian flag became a symbol of Pan-Africanism and anti-colonialism.

The realisation of Ghana’s new identity was a coordinated effort comprised of selected government departments. According to Fuller, the National Commission on Culture, the Town and Country Planning (Accra) Department, the Ministry of Local Government, and the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) were the deciding powers who dictated what Ghana’s newfound nationhood would look like. Their efforts led to Independence Arch, a statue of Dr J.B. Danquah at Danquah Circle, and Nkrumah’s statue at Parliament House (fig. 1), amongst others.5 They created PanAfrican iconography that resonated across the continent and internationally, especially in America.

Ghana’s trajectory was a blueprint for African Americans ardently fighting for equity during the civil rights movement (1954–68). Visual language was a powerful tool to motivate Black Americans, notably because they held few politically influential posts during this period; “a primary outlet for political opinions was the African American press – the United Negro Press (UNP) – and the black newspapers that thrived in almost every American city. These newspapers served as the sounding posts for black opinions. They provided a global information system for African Americans, who used the black press to stay abreast of worldwide developments that affected Africa and the Diaspora.”6 During this period, Ghana shared front-page coverage with the racial violence of the South.

The visual contrast between Ghana’s emancipation and America’s civil unrest created a spectrum to measure progress. Ghana represented the positive possibilities of a new existence through emerging infrastructure, monuments and modernist architecture, while America was in contrast with images of disorder, riots and civil rights plights.

While visuals of Nkrumah and independence monuments were inspirational and motivational, the stark difference also exacerbated the tension between Eisenhower’s America and liberal African Americans.

Whilst James Barnor’s photography and the efforts of the ministry of foreign affairs successfully exported Ghana’s new identity overseas, James Barnor recollects a more nuanced reception at home. He remembers public and political dissent at the initial presentation of Black Star Gate. Questions arose on whether it was a befitting encapsulation of independence. The disagreement was mainly about the aesthetics of the monument, which some felt were underwhelming. It also garnered concern for its high cost in relation to its minimalist appearance. The modernist structure was crowned with a black star to satiate the public and settle speculation.7 Today, it stands as an emblem of African liberty. Barnor’s testimonies grant an intimate insight into the conflicting process of nation-building; despite self-assured declarations from Nkrumah to create a new African personality, the reality was precarious. Differences in opinion marred the attainment of modernity within Ghana, causing friction locally and globally. Eventually, these tensions led to the coup d’état of the civilian government led by Kwame Nkrumah in 1966.

The early years of Ghana’s independence are often presented with a gloss that hides the blemishes of resentment that prompted Nkrumah’s overthrow. Barnor’s accounts dissolve these assumptions and reveal the underlying tension. The blend of Barnor’s photographic archive complemented by his narratives makes his portfolio outstanding because he recolours events with subtleties that have faded through time. This process is the elixir that makes him ever young; he is consistently called on to time travel. It is why Barnor speaks of being disheartened “when Autograph ABP temporarily stored all my negatives in air-conditioned rooms at Rivington Place, to curate the exhibition in 2010, I felt that my soul was gone. So, I called for them. And since I got my negatives

44

Fig. 3 Extract of an album made my James Barnor in the 1950s showing buildings in Station Road (the commercial area of Accra), an African American tourist photographing the Independence Monument and a self-portrait of James Barnor taken at the West African Drug Company, Accra, 1952

45

Fig. 4 Development of the new public transport ticketing system, Accra, late 1940s

Fig. 5 A conductor in Accra Central Bus station, 1970s

8. Margaret Busby and Francis Hodgson, “A conversation: James Barnor, Margaret Busby and Francis Hodgson” in James Barnor Ever Young, Renée Mussai (ed.), 1st ed., Clémentine de la Féronnière and Autograph ABP, Paris and London, 2015, p. 29.

9. Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, London, Heinemann, 1989, pp. 1–2.

10. Nwentoma is the Akan word for woven cloth.

back, many ideas are coming to mind all the time.”8 Barnor’s images are his companion.

His photographs resonate universally because they imbue historical, political, cultural and educational significance with his personal perspective. Barnor always captured the sentiment of the time and his life together. He fixed himself in history as a witness to a nation navigating a new identity through his lens and voice. In recording seminal moments and documenting history, he too becomes historic. It shows how a star is made, not born: from the monument to the man.

James Barnor’s visual attestations of Ghana are useful in deconstructing his process of history-making. To capture is to preserve. To keep is to value. To show is to celebrate, all the while fortifying multiple legacies. It is this constant and slow process, dependent on time that adds a richness to his oeuvre. It explains why his photographs are often described as classic, with contemporary audiences finding it hard to ascertain when precisely Barnor took his images. While his portfolio is a record of history, it also transcends it. His technical rigour and composition of people make his images high in aesthetic value; Barnor is an artist. It is a document of the past but also celebrates his life. By registering in both the historic realm and Barnor’s present life, it secures his imagery as timelessness.

This timelessness is evident in two photographs taken by Barnor at bus terminals over two decades apart (fig. 4 and 5). These images exist as photographic fact but also read like fiction, specifically reminding me of the opening chapter of Ayi Kwei Armah’s, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born: “The conductor sat up, his eyes wide open, took his bag off the floor, drew from within it his day’s block of tickets, and laying this on the seat beside him, poured out all the money he had collected so far beside it.

Then, checking the coins against the tickets, he began to count the morning’s take.9” In The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born, Armah uses public infrastructure and architecture as a motif to highlight the tension between a Ghanaian society in transition.

Armah opens with Passion week in April 1965 and ends on 25 February 1966 – the day after the official overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah. Visually, Barnor’s image shows progress in the form of national transport, while Armah gives voice to the passengers in transition.

In the images top left (fig. 4), Ghana is pictured as it would have been in 1947.

Steel sheets button together to form a metal vessel, inscribed stoutly with KUMASI MUNICIPAL TRANSPORT. The state bus is obscured mainly by commuters poised to board. Every window is ajar to pacify the heat. Eventually, the vehicle will meander through the streets, gifting each passenger their desired destination. Static and orderly, the small crowd is focused. All feet face front: barefoot, bound by leather boots or sandals. Above, draped nwentoma10 folds around biceps, waistlines and necks like the robes of a Grecian chorus. Four men flank the back of the bus, while five women stand centre frame. Each female head is adorned: with scarves, iron cooking pots, and a pan laden like a fruit bowl of plantain, onions, yam and other undiscernible delights. The woman of fruit bowl fame is focused as she stretches her hand towards the inspector. The ticket conductor reciprocates with a pass, dutifully focused on the exchange.

The second image (fig. 5) depicts 1970s Ghana. It is also a bus terminal, but radically different in the presentation of people. There are several indications illustrating a Ghana in flux. Flared trousers decorate both civilians and authority, with the bus conductor dressed in a co-ordinated suit, complete with a cap and sunglasses. Traditional attire had shifted to embrace the Western fashion of the seventies, showing how ubiquitous imported fashion had become twenty-three years and three governments after the first

46

11. Hans Ulrich Obrist, “Interview with James Barnor”, in James Barnor Accra / London – A Retrospective, Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Joseph Constable (eds.), 1st ed., Koenig Books, London, 2021, p. 18; in this publication p. 265.

12. J. Schneider, “The Topography of the Early History of African Photography”, History of Photography 34:2, 2010, pp. 134–146; see also J. Schneider, “African Photography in the Atlantic Visualscape: Moving Photographers – Circulating Images”, in S. Helff and S. Michels (eds.), Global Photographies: Memory – History – Archives, Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag, 2018, pp. 19–38.

13. See H. Haney, “Film, Charcoal, Time: Contemporaneities in Gold Coast Photographs”, History of Photography, 34:2, 2010, pp. 119–133.

14. Kate Dawson and Emma K. Hanson, “James Barnor: Accra/London — A Retrospective”, The London Journal, volume 46, issue 3, 2021, pp. 319–321 (p. 320). www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03058034.2021 .1956275 15. Trotros are informal private owned minivans.

There is no timetable or map. Typically, trotros wait until they are full to depart.

picture was taken. This aesthetic evolution was also a reflection of Ghana’s changing relationship with the world. By the time the second image was taken, Ghana’s borders had become more porous. Independence marked its place as an influencer, projecting a homogenous identity of African liberty as part of Nkrumah’s socialist affectations.

Ghana gradually moved from a socialist image to a country adopting global trends in its search for modernity without Nkrumah. It embraced globalisation from parliament to the people.

After Barnor returned to Ghana in 1969 following a ten-year stay in Britain, he revisited the public spaces that represented everyday Ghana to him. Ghana was still in its infancy attempting to gain a national identity after the overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966.

While the gestures of independence and nation-building remained, the sentiment of the nation was shifting. The public space was of significant inspiration to Barnor. He speaks vividly about the importance of documenting the quotidian, which was consistent throughout his career, “I called Makola market my second studio. If I took my camera there, I could have a complete set of photographs within thirty minutes. I remember when I was working for the Graphic, if I needed a photograph to fill a space on our pages, I’d take my bicycle and my camera and go there to photograph people acting informally, their natural behaviours.”11 Barnor’s raison d’être as a photographer was to reflect the society he was seeing, without interfering. He craved authenticity, which is why his images resonate universally.

The effect of Barnor’s relatability was described aptly in a review by Kate Dawson and Emma K. Hanson: “Historically, photographic images of the Gold Coast and its people were captured by European outsiders for audiences beyond the nation: travellers, naval officers, colonial governments and missionaries were among the most frequent possessors of cameras.12 By the mid-19th century, numerous skilled African photographers were working across the region, yet they tended to capture images of wealthier coastal families in Cape Coast and Accra, and, like elsewhere, would likely favour more formal portraiture such as “ceremonial debut spectacles, political ascendancy rites, and the visuality of decorum in larger public performances”.13 This was a history which Barnor challenged by overturning a long-rooted prioritising of events, and focusing instead on the moments that routinely enriched everyday lives and places.14 In 2018, Barnor was impassioned as he told me about the importance of these images. These buses and state buildings are not just structural artefacts, to be remembered only through memory and literature. They are benchmarks of what was. He began by asking me if I recognised the scene at the bus terminal. The images were relatively inconspicuous, and I had relegated them to the past. It has not occurred to me to consider how they related to my experience of Ghana and a contemporary context. I had distanced myself, seeing it merely as a time gone. I quipped, the closest version for daily transport was trotro, and a sporadic regional bus system.15 The stark contrast in both our experience almost brought Barnor to frustration as he told me how Ghana had regressed infrastructurally. He spoke fervently about the lack of order and maintenance – that it was important because of what it represented: what Ghana was and how it has regressed from this development.

Sometimes the continued aspiration of nation-building in Ghana feels elusive, but Barnor’s images ultimately do give reference and guidance. The relevance of Barnor’s work is felt even more as the world becomes a more fractured place, as we question what does it mean to be part of a nation? To believe in something. To work towards it.

And that’s what his images create and capture, an example of how it could be done.

47

Fig. 4 Development of the new public transport ticketing system, Accra, late 1940s

Fig. 5 A conductor in Accra Central Bus station, 1970s

8. Margaret Busby and Francis Hodgson, “A conversation: James Barnor, Margaret Busby and Francis Hodgson” in James Barnor Ever Young, Renée Mussai (ed.), 1st ed., Clémentine de la Féronnière and Autograph ABP, Paris and London, 2015, p. 29.

9. Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, London, Heinemann, 1989, pp. 1–2.

10. Nwentoma is the Akan word for woven cloth.

back, many ideas are coming to mind all the time.”8 Barnor’s images are his companion.

His photographs resonate universally because they imbue historical, political, cultural and educational significance with his personal perspective. Barnor always captured the sentiment of the time and his life together. He fixed himself in history as a witness to a nation navigating a new identity through his lens and voice. In recording seminal moments and documenting history, he too becomes historic. It shows how a star is made, not born: from the monument to the man.

James Barnor’s visual attestations of Ghana are useful in deconstructing his process of history-making. To capture is to preserve. To keep is to value. To show is to celebrate, all the while fortifying multiple legacies. It is this constant and slow process, dependent on time that adds a richness to his oeuvre. It explains why his photographs are often described as classic, with contemporary audiences finding it hard to ascertain when precisely Barnor took his images. While his portfolio is a record of history, it also transcends it. His technical rigour and composition of people make his images high in aesthetic value; Barnor is an artist. It is a document of the past but also celebrates his life. By registering in both the historic realm and Barnor’s present life, it secures his imagery as timelessness.

This timelessness is evident in two photographs taken by Barnor at bus terminals over two decades apart (fig. 4 and 5). These images exist as photographic fact but also read like fiction, specifically reminding me of the opening chapter of Ayi Kwei Armah’s, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born: “The conductor sat up, his eyes wide open, took his bag off the floor, drew from within it his day’s block of tickets, and laying this on the seat beside him, poured out all the money he had collected so far beside it.

Then, checking the coins against the tickets, he began to count the morning’s take.9” In The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born, Armah uses public infrastructure and architecture as a motif to highlight the tension between a Ghanaian society in transition.

Armah opens with Passion week in April 1965 and ends on 25 February 1966 – the day after the official overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah. Visually, Barnor’s image shows progress in the form of national transport, while Armah gives voice to the passengers in transition.

In the images top left (fig. 4), Ghana is pictured as it would have been in 1947.

Steel sheets button together to form a metal vessel, inscribed stoutly with KUMASI MUNICIPAL TRANSPORT. The state bus is obscured mainly by commuters poised to board. Every window is ajar to pacify the heat. Eventually, the vehicle will meander through the streets, gifting each passenger their desired destination. Static and orderly, the small crowd is focused. All feet face front: barefoot, bound by leather boots or sandals. Above, draped nwentoma10 folds around biceps, waistlines and necks like the robes of a Grecian chorus. Four men flank the back of the bus, while five women stand centre frame. Each female head is adorned: with scarves, iron cooking pots, and a pan laden like a fruit bowl of plantain, onions, yam and other undiscernible delights. The woman of fruit bowl fame is focused as she stretches her hand towards the inspector. The ticket conductor reciprocates with a pass, dutifully focused on the exchange.

The second image (fig. 5) depicts 1970s Ghana. It is also a bus terminal, but radically different in the presentation of people. There are several indications illustrating a Ghana in flux. Flared trousers decorate both civilians and authority, with the bus conductor dressed in a co-ordinated suit, complete with a cap and sunglasses. Traditional attire had shifted to embrace the Western fashion of the seventies, showing how ubiquitous imported fashion had become twenty-three years and three governments after the first

46

11. Hans Ulrich Obrist, “Interview with James Barnor”, in James Barnor Accra / London – A Retrospective, Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Joseph Constable (eds.), 1st ed., Koenig Books, London, 2021, p. 18; in this publication p. 265.

12. J. Schneider, “The Topography of the Early History of African Photography”, History of Photography 34:2, 2010, pp. 134–146; see also J. Schneider, “African Photography in the Atlantic Visualscape: Moving Photographers – Circulating Images”, in S. Helff and S. Michels (eds.), Global Photographies: Memory – History – Archives, Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag, 2018, pp. 19–38.

13. See H. Haney, “Film, Charcoal, Time: Contemporaneities in Gold Coast Photographs”, History of Photography, 34:2, 2010, pp. 119–133.

14. Kate Dawson and Emma K. Hanson, “James Barnor: Accra/London — A Retrospective”, The London Journal, volume 46, issue 3, 2021, pp. 319–321 (p. 320). www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03058034.2021 .1956275 15. Trotros are informal private owned minivans.

There is no timetable or map. Typically, trotros wait until they are full to depart.

picture was taken. This aesthetic evolution was also a reflection of Ghana’s changing relationship with the world. By the time the second image was taken, Ghana’s borders had become more porous. Independence marked its place as an influencer, projecting a homogenous identity of African liberty as part of Nkrumah’s socialist affectations.

Ghana gradually moved from a socialist image to a country adopting global trends in its search for modernity without Nkrumah. It embraced globalisation from parliament to the people.

After Barnor returned to Ghana in 1969 following a ten-year stay in Britain, he revisited the public spaces that represented everyday Ghana to him. Ghana was still in its infancy attempting to gain a national identity after the overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966.

While the gestures of independence and nation-building remained, the sentiment of the nation was shifting. The public space was of significant inspiration to Barnor. He speaks vividly about the importance of documenting the quotidian, which was consistent throughout his career, “I called Makola market my second studio. If I took my camera there, I could have a complete set of photographs within thirty minutes. I remember when I was working for the Graphic, if I needed a photograph to fill a space on our pages, I’d take my bicycle and my camera and go there to photograph people acting informally, their natural behaviours.”11 Barnor’s raison d’être as a photographer was to reflect the society he was seeing, without interfering. He craved authenticity, which is why his images resonate universally.

The effect of Barnor’s relatability was described aptly in a review by Kate Dawson and Emma K. Hanson: “Historically, photographic images of the Gold Coast and its people were captured by European outsiders for audiences beyond the nation: travellers, naval officers, colonial governments and missionaries were among the most frequent possessors of cameras.12 By the mid-19th century, numerous skilled African photographers were working across the region, yet they tended to capture images of wealthier coastal families in Cape Coast and Accra, and, like elsewhere, would likely favour more formal portraiture such as “ceremonial debut spectacles, political ascendancy rites, and the visuality of decorum in larger public performances”.13 This was a history which Barnor challenged by overturning a long-rooted prioritising of events, and focusing instead on the moments that routinely enriched everyday lives and places.14 In 2018, Barnor was impassioned as he told me about the importance of these images. These buses and state buildings are not just structural artefacts, to be remembered only through memory and literature. They are benchmarks of what was. He began by asking me if I recognised the scene at the bus terminal. The images were relatively inconspicuous, and I had relegated them to the past. It has not occurred to me to consider how they related to my experience of Ghana and a contemporary context. I had distanced myself, seeing it merely as a time gone. I quipped, the closest version for daily transport was trotro, and a sporadic regional bus system.15 The stark contrast in both our experience almost brought Barnor to frustration as he told me how Ghana had regressed infrastructurally. He spoke fervently about the lack of order and maintenance – that it was important because of what it represented: what Ghana was and how it has regressed from this development.

Sometimes the continued aspiration of nation-building in Ghana feels elusive, but Barnor’s images ultimately do give reference and guidance. The relevance of Barnor’s work is felt even more as the world becomes a more fractured place, as we question what does it mean to be part of a nation? To believe in something. To work towards it.

And that’s what his images create and capture, an example of how it could be done.

47

Fig. 6 Ghanaian stamps from the collection of James Barnor

His experiences and photographic collection fortify the stories and experiences of the generation he captured. Barnor prolifically documented everything and the everyday because he inherently believed that everything had value. He inherently knew that everything happening around him was magical and worth celebrating. Barnor commemorates the charm of the time through his self-given nickname, “Lucky Jim” as evidence of how this magic also impacted his life and career. The archives are a bookmark, to refer back to and understand what elements of Nkrumah’s Ghana can be revived or realised.

As Ghana regains momentum, these images will be important compasses. One day, they may feel familiar instead of purely iconoclastic.

Barnor’s images act as a qualifier, for a life and history unknown and unevidenced to and for many. The lack and deterioration of archives and knowledge management within Ghana makes it integral to rely on the wisdom of those who had the embodied experience. Ghana still utilises the roads that were built from and through independence, and Jamestown lives as a historical shadow of its former legacy.

Barnor’s images can be used as a guide of the potential that was once sustained and has fallen. If we cannot remember the potential we have built to, how can we expect contemporary generations to understand and aspire to it? Barnor’s images are critical in understanding and evaluating where Ghana was, and what it has begun. It is also an important trademark for understanding the nuance and complication of colonial history.

Barnor’s images offer an example of structure and order that Ghana has lost. He talks of departmental structure, the department of road and works regularly painting the side of the streets, people queuing for buses and receiving bus tickets; it is the same version of Ghana that Ayi Kewei Amarh spoke about in The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born. It also explains why Barnor is adamant about his work serving as both a testimony, but more important and urgently for him, it is a chance to educate, to show a younger generation that has risen through this fracturing that there is hope.

Now, nation-building is evolving into something different, manifesting through mass repatriation and built spaces celebrated by social media: a new image of Africa is burgeoning. It is why Barnor is preoccupied with education and using his images as a testimony of what was, and what could be and what should be continued. The documentation of a city in transition serves as testament of a history and development that has been diluted through time. To show them, and not just tell them to rediscover this momentum. His photography is a baton, handing over the responsibility of nation-building to the next generation. It is both a testimony and a test, to respond, to rebuild. This knowledge is most salient now because it feels as if the Pan-African philosophy is being realised. His archives serve as a treasure map embroidered with jewels to uncover and profile; it is a poetic circling of time.

48

Fig. 7 A busy market day in Kumasi (central Ghana), mid-1970s

49

Fig. 6 Ghanaian stamps from the collection of James Barnor

His experiences and photographic collection fortify the stories and experiences of the generation he captured. Barnor prolifically documented everything and the everyday because he inherently believed that everything had value. He inherently knew that everything happening around him was magical and worth celebrating. Barnor commemorates the charm of the time through his self-given nickname, “Lucky Jim” as evidence of how this magic also impacted his life and career. The archives are a bookmark, to refer back to and understand what elements of Nkrumah’s Ghana can be revived or realised.

As Ghana regains momentum, these images will be important compasses. One day, they may feel familiar instead of purely iconoclastic.

Barnor’s images act as a qualifier, for a life and history unknown and unevidenced to and for many. The lack and deterioration of archives and knowledge management within Ghana makes it integral to rely on the wisdom of those who had the embodied experience. Ghana still utilises the roads that were built from and through independence, and Jamestown lives as a historical shadow of its former legacy.

Barnor’s images can be used as a guide of the potential that was once sustained and has fallen. If we cannot remember the potential we have built to, how can we expect contemporary generations to understand and aspire to it? Barnor’s images are critical in understanding and evaluating where Ghana was, and what it has begun. It is also an important trademark for understanding the nuance and complication of colonial history.

Barnor’s images offer an example of structure and order that Ghana has lost. He talks of departmental structure, the department of road and works regularly painting the side of the streets, people queuing for buses and receiving bus tickets; it is the same version of Ghana that Ayi Kewei Amarh spoke about in The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born. It also explains why Barnor is adamant about his work serving as both a testimony, but more important and urgently for him, it is a chance to educate, to show a younger generation that has risen through this fracturing that there is hope.

Now, nation-building is evolving into something different, manifesting through mass repatriation and built spaces celebrated by social media: a new image of Africa is burgeoning. It is why Barnor is preoccupied with education and using his images as a testimony of what was, and what could be and what should be continued. The documentation of a city in transition serves as testament of a history and development that has been diluted through time. To show them, and not just tell them to rediscover this momentum. His photography is a baton, handing over the responsibility of nation-building to the next generation. It is both a testimony and a test, to respond, to rebuild. This knowledge is most salient now because it feels as if the Pan-African philosophy is being realised. His archives serve as a treasure map embroidered with jewels to uncover and profile; it is a poetic circling of time.

48

Fig. 7 A busy market day in Kumasi (central Ghana), mid-1970s

49

Accra, the capital of the British colony of the Gold Coast, which became Ghana on 6 March 1957, had been clamouring for independence since 1947. Throughout the 1950s, James Barnor’s photographic production followed this transition, in both his studio work and his street photography.

Born in 1929, Barnor apprenticed at his cousin’s studio, called “Yehowa Aakwe”,1 from 1947 to 1949 before going independent and founding his own studio, “Ever Young”. For four years he worked exclusively outdoors, under natural daylight, taking photos in the yard of his family’s house, in the impromptu setting of an old cemetery. Whether using a Kodak Baby Brownie or a professional-quality camera, he always demonstrated a taste for photographic experimentation, ready to adapt to any situation – as long as he could maintain the personal bond that he forged with each of his models.

GHANA

1947–1959

In 1953, when Kwame Nkrumah was initiating negotiations for Ghana’s independence, Barnor decided to open a base for his flourishing business in a former brewery in Accra’s Jamestown neighbourhood. The old port and commercial district had already been home to several generations of professional photographers, but Barnor’s fresh perspective on the society around him rejuvenated the aesthetic of the portrait. His sense of staging, the studio’s interchangeable décors and the variety of poses and framing ideas that he explored over time enriched the representational repertoire of the clientele he attracted. Friends, family and passers-by were all eager to mount the podium at Ever Young, which was open night and day. They would drop in after a ceremony at Holy Trinity Cathedral or before hitting the dance floor at the Sea View Hotel, the city’s hottest nightspot at the time, located just a few metres from the studio, in the shadow of Jamestown’s iconic lighthouse. It was an entire society on the move, who all came to celebrate the high points of their lives in front of James Barnor’s lens.

Even while offering a private showcase for the expression of individual identities, Barnor was not aloof to the political transformations taking place in the public arena.

Demonstrations, street parades and festive ceremonies also figure among the collective life events that enliven his archive. Hired in 1951 as one of the first local photojournalists for the newspaper Daily Graphic, in addition to regular assignments for the South African anti-apartheid cultural magazine Drum, he personified the nascent new era in the recruitment of press journalists, a profession previously reserved for the British.

The young Barnor, “always on the move”, forever on the lookout for an interesting event, captured history at ground level. His uncompromising images combine his penchant for documenting everyday life in Accra with his desire to chronicle a decade that was redefining the course of his country’s destiny.

1. An expression in the Ga language meaning “God will see.”

51

Accra, the capital of the British colony of the Gold Coast, which became Ghana on 6 March 1957, had been clamouring for independence since 1947. Throughout the 1950s, James Barnor’s photographic production followed this transition, in both his studio work and his street photography.

Born in 1929, Barnor apprenticed at his cousin’s studio, called “Yehowa Aakwe”,1 from 1947 to 1949 before going independent and founding his own studio, “Ever Young”. For four years he worked exclusively outdoors, under natural daylight, taking photos in the yard of his family’s house, in the impromptu setting of an old cemetery. Whether using a Kodak Baby Brownie or a professional-quality camera, he always demonstrated a taste for photographic experimentation, ready to adapt to any situation – as long as he could maintain the personal bond that he forged with each of his models.

GHANA

1947–1959

In 1953, when Kwame Nkrumah was initiating negotiations for Ghana’s independence, Barnor decided to open a base for his flourishing business in a former brewery in Accra’s Jamestown neighbourhood. The old port and commercial district had already been home to several generations of professional photographers, but Barnor’s fresh perspective on the society around him rejuvenated the aesthetic of the portrait. His sense of staging, the studio’s interchangeable décors and the variety of poses and framing ideas that he explored over time enriched the representational repertoire of the clientele he attracted. Friends, family and passers-by were all eager to mount the podium at Ever Young, which was open night and day. They would drop in after a ceremony at Holy Trinity Cathedral or before hitting the dance floor at the Sea View Hotel, the city’s hottest nightspot at the time, located just a few metres from the studio, in the shadow of Jamestown’s iconic lighthouse. It was an entire society on the move, who all came to celebrate the high points of their lives in front of James Barnor’s lens.

Even while offering a private showcase for the expression of individual identities, Barnor was not aloof to the political transformations taking place in the public arena.

Demonstrations, street parades and festive ceremonies also figure among the collective life events that enliven his archive. Hired in 1951 as one of the first local photojournalists for the newspaper Daily Graphic, in addition to regular assignments for the South African anti-apartheid cultural magazine Drum, he personified the nascent new era in the recruitment of press journalists, a profession previously reserved for the British.

The young Barnor, “always on the move”, forever on the lookout for an interesting event, captured history at ground level. His uncompromising images combine his penchant for documenting everyday life in Accra with his desire to chronicle a decade that was redefining the course of his country’s destiny.

1. An expression in the Ga language meaning “God will see.”

51

Outdoor portraits, before the opening of the Ever Young Studio in Jamestown, Accra, between 1950 and 1953, vintage prints, 13 × 8.5 cm (each)

Cat. 1 Naa Yemoley Quarshie sitting on a grave in an old cemetery at the very beginning of James Barnor’s photography career, Amamomo, Accra, 1949

52

53

Outdoor portraits, before the opening of the Ever Young Studio in Jamestown, Accra, between 1950 and 1953, vintage prints, 13 × 8.5 cm (each)

Cat. 1 Naa Yemoley Quarshie sitting on a grave in an old cemetery at the very beginning of James Barnor’s photography career, Amamomo, Accra, 1949

52

53

James Barnor’s ID card, 1950, 12.5 × 9.3 cm (closed)

Cat. 2 Self-portrait with a store assistant at the West African Drug Company, central Accra, c. 1952

54

55

James Barnor’s ID card, 1950, 12.5 × 9.3 cm (closed)

Cat. 2 Self-portrait with a store assistant at the West African Drug Company, central Accra, c. 1952

54

55

A little girl with her black doll. Cuttings from the Sunday Mirror (20 August 1953) in an album made

by James Barnor in the 1950s Cat. 3 “Baby on All Fours”, Eric Nii Addoquaye Ankrah, Ever Young Studio, Arena area, Accra, c. 1952

56

57

A little girl with her black doll. Cuttings from the Sunday Mirror (20 August 1953) in an album made

by James Barnor in the 1950s Cat. 3 “Baby on All Fours”, Eric Nii Addoquaye Ankrah, Ever Young Studio, Arena area, Accra, c. 1952

56

57

A young woman standing (Mr Crabbe’s sister-in-law), Ever Young Studio, c. 1953, vintage print, 10.5 × 7.5 cm Cat. 4 The first client of the Ever Young Studio after its installation in Jamestown (an undergraduate student at the University of Ghana, Legon), Accra, 1953

58

59

A young woman standing (Mr Crabbe’s sister-in-law), Ever Young Studio, c. 1953, vintage print, 10.5 × 7.5 cm Cat. 4 The first client of the Ever Young Studio after its installation in Jamestown (an undergraduate student at the University of Ghana, Legon), Accra, 1953

58

59

The young Beatrice Okaijah during a sports competition, in one of James Barnor’s early portraits, Accra, c. 1947, vintage print, 9 × 6.5 cm Cat. 5 Self-portrait with friend Beatrice Okaijah, Ever Young Studio, c. 1953

60

61

The young Beatrice Okaijah during a sports competition, in one of James Barnor’s early portraits, Accra, c. 1947, vintage print, 9 × 6.5 cm Cat. 5 Self-portrait with friend Beatrice Okaijah, Ever Young Studio, c. 1953

60

61

Evelyn Abbew alone and with a friend, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56, glass plate negatives, 14 × 9 cm (each) Cat. 6 Evelyn Abbew, a nurse and close friend of James Barnor, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56

62

63

Evelyn Abbew alone and with a friend, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56, glass plate negatives, 14 × 9 cm (each) Cat. 6 Evelyn Abbew, a nurse and close friend of James Barnor, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56

62

63

Cat. 7 A portrait of Evelyn Abbew, Sackey Mensah and a friend, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56

65

Cat. 7 A portrait of Evelyn Abbew, Sackey Mensah and a friend, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56

65

Front and side portraits of Evelyn Abbew on the Ever Young Studio stool, c. 1954–56

Cat. 8 Evelyn Abbew washing prints at the Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56

66

67

Front and side portraits of Evelyn Abbew on the Ever Young Studio stool, c. 1954–56

Cat. 8 Evelyn Abbew washing prints at the Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56

66

67

Selina Opong in her policewoman uniform, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954 Cat. 9 Selina Opong, one of the first policewomen in Ghana, caught in a pensive pose, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56

68

69

Selina Opong in her policewoman uniform, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954 Cat. 9 Selina Opong, one of the first policewomen in Ghana, caught in a pensive pose, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954–56

68

69

“Hands and Brains” – a friend posing next to a Morphy Richards radiogram and a colonial propaganda poster, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954 Cat. 10 Alfred Quarshie by the advertising board of the Ever Young Studio, c. 1955

70

71

“Hands and Brains” – a friend posing next to a Morphy Richards radiogram and a colonial propaganda poster, Ever Young Studio, c. 1954 Cat. 10 Alfred Quarshie by the advertising board of the Ever Young Studio, c. 1955

70

71

Flyer of the exhibition dedicated to Ghanaian crafts and culture organised by James Barnor at Medway College of Art, Kent, c. 1963, 22.5 × 11.5 cm Cat. 11 Two girls after a puberty rite celebration, outside the Ever Young Studio, c. 1953–55

72

73

Flyer of the exhibition dedicated to Ghanaian crafts and culture organised by James Barnor at Medway College of Art, Kent, c. 1963, 22.5 × 11.5 cm Cat. 11 Two girls after a puberty rite celebration, outside the Ever Young Studio, c. 1953–55

72

73

A children’s home, Kaneshie, Accra, c. 1953–54, vintage print, 16.5 × 22 cm

Cat. 12 Daughter of James Barnor’s friend, Accra, c. 1954–55

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A children’s home, Kaneshie, Accra, c. 1953–54, vintage print, 16.5 × 22 cm

Cat. 12 Daughter of James Barnor’s friend, Accra, c. 1954–55

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75

Henri, a taxi driver friend leaning on his cab in front of the Ever Young Studio, between 1953 and 1956, vintage print taken from an album made by James Barnor in the 1950s, 12.5 × 6 cm Cat. 13 Miss Biney leaning against a coconut tree in front of James Fort prison, Jamestown, Accra, c. 1953–59

76

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Henri, a taxi driver friend leaning on his cab in front of the Ever Young Studio, between 1953 and 1956, vintage print taken from an album made by James Barnor in the 1950s, 12.5 × 6 cm Cat. 13 Miss Biney leaning against a coconut tree in front of James Fort prison, Jamestown, Accra, c. 1953–59

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77

Cat. 14 The Olas Comedians, an all-male troupe taken in the Ever Young Studio, c. 1953–54

79

Cat. 14 The Olas Comedians, an all-male troupe taken in the Ever Young Studio, c. 1953–54

79

A close friend of James Barnor (Mr Mensah) in the early days of the Ever Young Studio, c. 1953, vintage print, 13 × 8.5 cm Cat. 15 Naa Jacobson as Ballroom Queen after a fashion show, Ever Young Studio, c. 1955

80

81

A close friend of James Barnor (Mr Mensah) in the early days of the Ever Young Studio, c. 1953, vintage print, 13 × 8.5 cm Cat. 15 Naa Jacobson as Ballroom Queen after a fashion show, Ever Young Studio, c. 1955

80

81

Cat. 16 The “Ghanaian Indian”, after a fashion show, Ever Young Studio, c. 1955

83

Cat. 16 The “Ghanaian Indian”, after a fashion show, Ever Young Studio, c. 1955

83

Customised Kodak sleeve of the Ever Young Studio, 1950s, 12.3 × 8.3 cm (closed)

Cat. 17 The Ever Young Studio, after some renovation works, Jamestown, Accra, 1956

84

85

Customised Kodak sleeve of the Ever Young Studio, 1950s, 12.3 × 8.3 cm (closed)

Cat. 17 The Ever Young Studio, after some renovation works, Jamestown, Accra, 1956

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85

Peter Dodoo, Ever Young Studio, c. 1956, contact prints, 6 × 6 cm

Cat. 18 Peter Dodoo (a yoga student), Ever Young Studio, c. 1956

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Peter Dodoo, Ever Young Studio, c. 1956, contact prints, 6 × 6 cm

Cat. 18 Peter Dodoo (a yoga student), Ever Young Studio, c. 1956

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The art of hairstyles. Cropped prints assembled in a vintage album made by James Barnor in the 1950s, c. 6 × 4 cm each.

Cat. 19 Miss Bruce portrayed in her new hairstyle after finishing school, Ever Young Studio, c. 1956

88

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The art of hairstyles. Cropped prints assembled in a vintage album made by James Barnor in the 1950s, c. 6 × 4 cm each.

Cat. 19 Miss Bruce portrayed in her new hairstyle after finishing school, Ever Young Studio, c. 1956

88

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Rosina Mensah after she won the Miss Accra competition, Ever Young Studio, c. 1957, digitised negative contact sheet

Cat. 20 Rosina Mensah, “Miss Accra” with a Coca-Cola bottle, Ever Young Studio, c. 1957

90

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Rosina Mensah after she won the Miss Accra competition, Ever Young Studio, c. 1957, digitised negative contact sheet

Cat. 20 Rosina Mensah, “Miss Accra” with a Coca-Cola bottle, Ever Young Studio, c. 1957

90

91

Beatrice Okaijah leaning on a stool with her double, the “Baby” figurine, Ever Young Studio, c. 1953 Cat. 21 A regular sitter of the Ever Young Studio leaning on a stool, between 1955 and 1959

92

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Beatrice Okaijah leaning on a stool with her double, the “Baby” figurine, Ever Young Studio, c. 1953 Cat. 21 A regular sitter of the Ever Young Studio leaning on a stool, between 1955 and 1959

92

93

The Blavo wedding group picture in front of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, early 1950s, vintage print, 16.5 × 21.5 cm Cat. 22 Miss Blavo and Miss Mills donning sophisticated outfits at the Ever Young Studio after a wedding, c. 1956–59

94

95

The Blavo wedding group picture in front of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, early 1950s, vintage print, 16.5 × 21.5 cm Cat. 22 Miss Blavo and Miss Mills donning sophisticated outfits at the Ever Young Studio after a wedding, c. 1956–59

94

95

A wedding guest posing with James Barnor’s new Linhof camera, c. 1954–55

Cat. 23 Wedding of a customs officer at the Ghana-Togo border, c. 1954–55

96

97

A wedding guest posing with James Barnor’s new Linhof camera, c. 1954–55

Cat. 23 Wedding of a customs officer at the Ghana-Togo border, c. 1954–55

96

97

Cat. 24 Sam Crabbe (front left) and friends near the Jamestown lighthouse, Accra, 1957

99

Cat. 24 Sam Crabbe (front left) and friends near the Jamestown lighthouse, Accra, 1957

99

The Nigerian Superman playing a gramophone and holding James Barnor’s son at the same time, Old Polo Grounds, Accra, c. 1958 Cat. 25 The Nigerian Superman, a renowned performer in Mantse Agbona, Jamestown, Accra, 1958

100

101

The Nigerian Superman playing a gramophone and holding James Barnor’s son at the same time, Old Polo Grounds, Accra, c. 1958 Cat. 25 The Nigerian Superman, a renowned performer in Mantse Agbona, Jamestown, Accra, 1958

100

101

Kwame Nkrumah in his PG (Prison Graduate) cap, kicking a football before the start of an international match between Ghana and Togo at Owusu Memorial Park in Fadama, Accra, 1952 Cat. 26 A member of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) at a political rally in Kumasi (central Ghana), 1956

102

103

Kwame Nkrumah in his PG (Prison Graduate) cap, kicking a football before the start of an international match between Ghana and Togo at Owusu Memorial Park in Fadama, Accra, 1952 Cat. 26 A member of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) at a political rally in Kumasi (central Ghana), 1956

102

103

Kwame Nkrumah greeting the Duchess of Kent during the independence celebrations, Accra Stadium, March 1957 Cat. 27 Kwame Nkrumah with the Duchess of Kent and British officials during a ceremony for the independence at the stadium, Accra, March 1957

104

105

Kwame Nkrumah greeting the Duchess of Kent during the independence celebrations, Accra Stadium, March 1957 Cat. 27 Kwame Nkrumah with the Duchess of Kent and British officials during a ceremony for the independence at the stadium, Accra, March 1957

104

105

Launching of a boat for a regatta at Jamestown Harbour, March 1957, vintage print, 9 × 14 cm

Cat. 28 A regatta organised at Jamestown Harbour during Ghana’s independence celebrations, Accra, March 1957

106

107

Launching of a boat for a regatta at Jamestown Harbour, March 1957, vintage print, 9 × 14 cm

Cat. 28 A regatta organised at Jamestown Harbour during Ghana’s independence celebrations, Accra, March 1957

106

107

The Independence Monument with its black star, Black Star Square, Accra, 1970s Cat. 29 An African American tourist photographing the Independence Monument before the addition of the black star, Black Star Square, Accra, c. 1958–59

108

109

The Independence Monument with its black star, Black Star Square, Accra, 1970s Cat. 29 An African American tourist photographing the Independence Monument before the addition of the black star, Black Star Square, Accra, c. 1958–59

108

109

UNITED KINGDOM 1959–1969

Always drawn to new horizons, Barnor took off for London in 1959 with the goal of furthering his education in photography. What was originally intended as a short stay ultimately stretched into a decade, during which the variety of professional opportunities that came his way nourished the singular eclecticism of his photographic output.

In 1960 he extended his palette to include colour. Struck by the technique’s potential, Barnor began experimenting with Kodachrome film and later enrolled at Medway College of Art in Kent, where he soon became a technical assistant.

In 1966 he returned to London and resumed working for the Pan-African magazine Drum, the mouthpiece of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa since 1951. Drum covered many aspects of politics and urban life, and by the 1960s had become one of Africa’s most widely read publications. Its covers featured the first Black models at a time when they were almost never seen in the press. Barnor produced “pop” portraits of these muses, who were students, singers or aspiring models from the African diaspora.

His images portrayed the hopes of a community as much as its sense of style: the colourful dresses and retro hairstyles contrasted with the images of Twiggy, who was then all the rage. Embodying an English-style multiculturalism, these covers were also stylistic exercises for Barnor. Part fashion photography and part storytelling, they had a lasting influence on his approach to the portrait, at the same time putting his images on prominent display in London newsstands. He also photographed emblematic personalities of the diasporic community for Drum, including Muhammad Ali, captured in action before his legendary match against Brian London, and the Ghanaian radio star Mike Eghan, who was then officiating for the BBC African Service.

Far from iconic landmarks like Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, the 1960s were also a time of more personal pleasures for Barnor – Sundays in southern England, cosy parties in the company of Ghanaian or Nigerian friends. Somewhere between a photo romance and a journey of initiation in the British public space, James Barnor celebrated the African presence in a United Kingdom that was gradually spurning multiculturalism in favour of a hardened sense of identity.1 But nothing could diminish Barnor’s energy. The photographer ended his European decade with training at Agfa-Gevaert in Germany and Belgium. The company was looking for a technical representative to promote its new products on the Ghanaian market, and they found that spokesperson in James Barnor.

1. One thinks of Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech from 1968.

111

UNITED KINGDOM 1959–1969

Always drawn to new horizons, Barnor took off for London in 1959 with the goal of furthering his education in photography. What was originally intended as a short stay ultimately stretched into a decade, during which the variety of professional opportunities that came his way nourished the singular eclecticism of his photographic output.

In 1960 he extended his palette to include colour. Struck by the technique’s potential, Barnor began experimenting with Kodachrome film and later enrolled at Medway College of Art in Kent, where he soon became a technical assistant.

In 1966 he returned to London and resumed working for the Pan-African magazine Drum, the mouthpiece of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa since 1951. Drum covered many aspects of politics and urban life, and by the 1960s had become one of Africa’s most widely read publications. Its covers featured the first Black models at a time when they were almost never seen in the press. Barnor produced “pop” portraits of these muses, who were students, singers or aspiring models from the African diaspora.

His images portrayed the hopes of a community as much as its sense of style: the colourful dresses and retro hairstyles contrasted with the images of Twiggy, who was then all the rage. Embodying an English-style multiculturalism, these covers were also stylistic exercises for Barnor. Part fashion photography and part storytelling, they had a lasting influence on his approach to the portrait, at the same time putting his images on prominent display in London newsstands. He also photographed emblematic personalities of the diasporic community for Drum, including Muhammad Ali, captured in action before his legendary match against Brian London, and the Ghanaian radio star Mike Eghan, who was then officiating for the BBC African Service.

Far from iconic landmarks like Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, the 1960s were also a time of more personal pleasures for Barnor – Sundays in southern England, cosy parties in the company of Ghanaian or Nigerian friends. Somewhere between a photo romance and a journey of initiation in the British public space, James Barnor celebrated the African presence in a United Kingdom that was gradually spurning multiculturalism in favour of a hardened sense of identity.1 But nothing could diminish Barnor’s energy. The photographer ended his European decade with training at Agfa-Gevaert in Germany and Belgium. The company was looking for a technical representative to promote its new products on the Ghanaian market, and they found that spokesperson in James Barnor.

1. One thinks of Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech from 1968.

111

A summer day with the family of Dennis Kemp and James Barnor’s friends, Sussex, c. 1960–61, vintage Kodachrome prints, 9 × 9 cm Cat. 30 Ann Kemp busy hanging her laundry in her Southwick garden with her son John, Sussex, c. 1960–61

112

113

A summer day with the family of Dennis Kemp and James Barnor’s friends, Sussex, c. 1960–61, vintage Kodachrome prints, 9 × 9 cm Cat. 30 Ann Kemp busy hanging her laundry in her Southwick garden with her son John, Sussex, c. 1960–61

112

113

An onion seller from France on a market day in Rochester, Kent, c. 1962–63, vintage print, 26 × 20.4 cm

Cat. 31 An early morning scene at Covent Garden Market, London, 1960

114

115

An onion seller from France on a market day in Rochester, Kent, c. 1962–63, vintage print, 26 × 20.4 cm

Cat. 31 An early morning scene at Covent Garden Market, London, 1960

114

115

Bridesmaids holding the bride’s veil while leaving the house for the wedding of Mrs and Mr Sackey in London, 1966, vintage print, 21.5 × 16.5 cm Cat. 32 A Ghanaian wedding in London, captured while James Barnor was still a student at the Medway College of Art, c. 1962–63

116

117

Bridesmaids holding the bride’s veil while leaving the house for the wedding of Mrs and Mr Sackey in London, 1966, vintage print, 21.5 × 16.5 cm Cat. 32 A Ghanaian wedding in London, captured while James Barnor was still a student at the Medway College of Art, c. 1962–63

116

117

Cat. 33 A gathering after the baptism of a Ghanaian baby, James Vanderpuye (front left), London, early 1960s

118

119

Cat. 33 A gathering after the baptism of a Ghanaian baby, James Vanderpuye (front left), London, early 1960s

118

119

Double portrait with matching outfits, Medway College of Art, Rochester, Kent, c. 1963, vintage print, 22 × 16.5 cm, collection of Centre Pompidou MNAM-CCI, Paris Cat. 34 A Nigerian friend with her sixties hairstyle, modelling for James Barnor at the Medway College of Art Photography Studio, Rochester, Kent, c. 1963

120

121

Double portrait with matching outfits, Medway College of Art, Rochester, Kent, c. 1963, vintage print, 22 × 16.5 cm, collection of Centre Pompidou MNAM-CCI, Paris Cat. 34 A Nigerian friend with her sixties hairstyle, modelling for James Barnor at the Medway College of Art Photography Studio, Rochester, Kent, c. 1963

120

121

Sarah Mills Okaikoi posing on a bicycle borrowed from a passer-by by the photographer, Balham Park, London, 1965, vintage print, 16.5 × 11.5 cm, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Art Cat. 35 Sarah Mills Okaikoi, a student from Ghana, captured for the cover of Flamingo magazine in Balham Park, London, c. 1965

122

123

Sarah Mills Okaikoi posing on a bicycle borrowed from a passer-by by the photographer, Balham Park, London, 1965, vintage print, 16.5 × 11.5 cm, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Art Cat. 35 Sarah Mills Okaikoi, a student from Ghana, captured for the cover of Flamingo magazine in Balham Park, London, c. 1965

122

123

Cat. 36 A model at Petticoat Lane Market, London, c. 1965

125

Cat. 36 A model at Petticoat Lane Market, London, c. 1965

125

Sarah Mills Okaikoi hugged by an admirer after a wedding reception, 1966, vintage print, 25.2 × 20 cm, collection of Centre Pompidou MNAM-CCI, Paris Cat. 37 Friends pose for the camera after the wedding of Mrs and Mr Sackey in Balham, London, 1966

126

127

Sarah Mills Okaikoi hugged by an admirer after a wedding reception, 1966, vintage print, 25.2 × 20 cm, collection of Centre Pompidou MNAM-CCI, Paris Cat. 37 Friends pose for the camera after the wedding of Mrs and Mr Sackey in Balham, London, 1966

126

127

Muhammad Ali surrounded by fans after his Earls Court fight against Brian London, London, August 1966, vintage print, 20.5 × 15.5 cm

Cat. 38 Muhammad Ali preparing for his fight against Brian London in a London gym, August 1966

128

129

Muhammad Ali surrounded by fans after his Earls Court fight against Brian London, London, August 1966, vintage print, 20.5 × 15.5 cm

Cat. 38 Muhammad Ali preparing for his fight against Brian London in a London gym, August 1966

128

129

Cover and story with “Drum’s girl of the month” Rema Nelson in her everyday life, Nigerian edition of Drum, December 1966, 35.5 × 27.5 cm Cat. 39 Jamaican model Rema Nelson, James Barnor’s first Drum cover girl, hopping on the bus to south-east London during a photoshoot, 1966

130

131

Cover and story with “Drum’s girl of the month” Rema Nelson in her everyday life, Nigerian edition of Drum, December 1966, 35.5 × 27.5 cm Cat. 39 Jamaican model Rema Nelson, James Barnor’s first Drum cover girl, hopping on the bus to south-east London during a photoshoot, 1966

130

131

A three-year-old Kenyan girl celebrating her birthday in Chatham, near Rochester, Kent, c. 1960, vintage print, 11 × 8.5 cm Cat. 40 Drum cover girl Rema Nelson takes a break eating candy floss during her shoot at Battersea Park, London, 1966

132

133

A three-year-old Kenyan girl celebrating her birthday in Chatham, near Rochester, Kent, c. 1960, vintage print, 11 × 8.5 cm Cat. 40 Drum cover girl Rema Nelson takes a break eating candy floss during her shoot at Battersea Park, London, 1966

132

133

Mike Eghan getting it straight from the lion’s own mouth at Trafalgar Square, London, 1967

Cat. 41 Mike Eghan’s photoshoot for Drum at Piccadilly Circus, London, 1967

134

135

Mike Eghan getting it straight from the lion’s own mouth at Trafalgar Square, London, 1967

Cat. 41 Mike Eghan’s photoshoot for Drum at Piccadilly Circus, London, 1967

134

135

Cat. 42 Erlin Ibreck, a Ugandan model spotted by James Barnor for Drum, posing with pigeons at Trafalgar Square, London, c. 1966–67

137

Cat. 42 Erlin Ibreck, a Ugandan model spotted by James Barnor for Drum, posing with pigeons at Trafalgar Square, London, c. 1966–67

137

Erlin Ibreck photographed at Bill Hutson’s studio (an African American artist) in Kilburn, London, 1966, vintage print, 21.8 × 16.5 cm, collection of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac Cat. 43 Drum cover girl Erlin Ibreck stepping out of a Jaguar in Kilburn, London, 1966

138

139

Erlin Ibreck photographed at Bill Hutson’s studio (an African American artist) in Kilburn, London, 1966, vintage print, 21.8 × 16.5 cm, collection of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac Cat. 43 Drum cover girl Erlin Ibreck stepping out of a Jaguar in Kilburn, London, 1966

138

139

Erlin Ibreck lying in the Campbell-Drayton studio, Gray’s Inn Road, London, 1967, vintage print, 20 × 25.5 cm

Cat. 44 Photoshoot with Erlin Ibreck at Campbell-Drayton Studio, Gray’s Inn Road, London, 1967

140

141

Erlin Ibreck lying in the Campbell-Drayton studio, Gray’s Inn Road, London, 1967, vintage print, 20 × 25.5 cm

Cat. 44 Photoshoot with Erlin Ibreck at Campbell-Drayton Studio, Gray’s Inn Road, London, 1967

140

141

Cover and story with “Drum’s girl of the month” Marie Hallowi, Nigerian edition of Drum, June 1966, 35.5 × 27.5 cm

Cat. 45 Marie Hallowi, a Nigerian-Lebanese model, during a photo session for Drum at a swimming pool in Rochester, Kent, 1966

142

143

Cover and story with “Drum’s girl of the month” Marie Hallowi, Nigerian edition of Drum, June 1966, 35.5 × 27.5 cm

Cat. 45 Marie Hallowi, a Nigerian-Lebanese model, during a photo session for Drum at a swimming pool in Rochester, Kent, 1966

142

143

A photoshoot at Trafalgar Square taken from the top of a London bus, mid-1960s, vintage print, 30.5 × 25.5 cm

Cat. 46 Marie Hallowi in her iconic sixties look at Trafalgar Square, London, 1966

144

145

A photoshoot at Trafalgar Square taken from the top of a London bus, mid-1960s, vintage print, 30.5 × 25.5 cm

Cat. 46 Marie Hallowi in her iconic sixties look at Trafalgar Square, London, 1966

144

145

Drum cover with Rosemarie Thompson, Nigerian edition, June 1967, 35.5 × 27.5 cm

Rosemarie Thompson improvising a pose on a ladder in the cold on Gray’s Inn Road, vintage print, 25.3 × 20.4 cm Cat. 47 Rosemarie “Funflower” Thompson posing for Drum at the Campbell-Drayton Studio, Gray’s Inn Road, London, 1967

146

147

Drum cover with Rosemarie Thompson, Nigerian edition, June 1967, 35.5 × 27.5 cm

Rosemarie Thompson improvising a pose on a ladder in the cold on Gray’s Inn Road, vintage print, 25.3 × 20.4 cm Cat. 47 Rosemarie “Funflower” Thompson posing for Drum at the Campbell-Drayton Studio, Gray’s Inn Road, London, 1967

146

147

Cat. 48 Constance Mulondo, a student and singer from Uganda, aka “Cool Constance”, posing for the cover of Drum magazine at the Campbell-Drayton Studio, Gray’s Inn Road, London, 1967

149

Cat. 48 Constance Mulondo, a student and singer from Uganda, aka “Cool Constance”, posing for the cover of Drum magazine at the Campbell-Drayton Studio, Gray’s Inn Road, London, 1967

149

Constance Mulondo dancing after a concert, 1967, vintage print, 26 × 20.5 cm

Drum cover with Constance Mulondo, Nigerian edition, August 1967, 35.5 × 27.5 cm Cat. 49 Constance Mulondo, posing for Drum after a concert of the Millionaires, London, 1967

150

151

Constance Mulondo dancing after a concert, 1967, vintage print, 26 × 20.5 cm

Drum cover with Constance Mulondo, Nigerian edition, August 1967, 35.5 × 27.5 cm Cat. 49 Constance Mulondo, posing for Drum after a concert of the Millionaires, London, 1967

150

151

Cat. 50 Members of the Tunbridge Wells Overseas Club, relaxing after a summer Sunday walk, Kent, c. 1969

153

Cat. 50 Members of the Tunbridge Wells Overseas Club, relaxing after a summer Sunday walk, Kent, c. 1969

153

Detailed programme of James Barnor’s training at Agfa-Gevaert, August 1969

Cat. 51 Self-portrait with a model during James Barnor’s training at the Agfa-Gevaert laboratory in Mortsel, Belgium, 1969

154

155

Detailed programme of James Barnor’s training at Agfa-Gevaert, August 1969

Cat. 51 Self-portrait with a model during James Barnor’s training at the Agfa-Gevaert laboratory in Mortsel, Belgium, 1969

154

155

In late 1969, James Barnor left Europe and returned to Ghana, where he was hired as a manager at Sick Hagemeyer, which represented Agfa-Gevaert. He opened Accra’s first colour photography laboratory: “In the 1970s, there were no colour processing laboratories in Ghana. Anyone who took colour photos had to send them out of the country to have them developed and printed. I was proud to have had the opportunity to learn colour in Britain and to show that the first processing test was a success.”1 Although his collaboration with Agfa came to an end in 1972, colour continued to play a growing role in Barnor’s work throughout the decade.

GHANA

1970–1987

In the 1970s and 80s, which were marked by a string of coups d’état in Ghana, Barnor pursued his career as a portrait photographer at Studio X23, which he opened in 1972.

His country’s economic instability also induced him to expand his activities and knowhow. Working in colour or black and white, he produced album covers for famous musicians and accepted major commissions from clients like Apple Pie Publicity, a communication agency that represented many Ghanaian companies. He photographed his models in local settings, in front of the city’s monuments, or with oil barrels or metal tubes, celebrating in his deeply personal style the diverse materialities of a capital in perpetual reconstruction.

In parallel with his commercial activity, Barnor continued working as a photojournalist, chronicling daily life in Ghana. He also enjoyed photographing his friends and family members, at his studio, in their homes, and most of all in the streets of Accra, encouraging his subjects to take an active role in the way they appeared before his lens. His images are a headlong plunge into the lifestyle of the time: a young woman leaning on a car dressed in a traditional outfit made of kente cloth; a group of children in a backyard; a family coming out of church on Sunday, dressed in a variety of apparel. These exuberant series from the 1970s and 80s address themes related to individual and community identity, clothing and hairstyles, music and celebrations – activities that became Barnor’s primary focus in the 1980s when he served as the manager of Fee Hi,2 a cultural group made up of young artists.

1. Excerpt from a filmed interview at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronière, June 2019.

2. Ga expression meaning “All is well.”

157

In late 1969, James Barnor left Europe and returned to Ghana, where he was hired as a manager at Sick Hagemeyer, which represented Agfa-Gevaert. He opened Accra’s first colour photography laboratory: “In the 1970s, there were no colour processing laboratories in Ghana. Anyone who took colour photos had to send them out of the country to have them developed and printed. I was proud to have had the opportunity to learn colour in Britain and to show that the first processing test was a success.”1 Although his collaboration with Agfa came to an end in 1972, colour continued to play a growing role in Barnor’s work throughout the decade.

GHANA

1970–1987

In the 1970s and 80s, which were marked by a string of coups d’état in Ghana, Barnor pursued his career as a portrait photographer at Studio X23, which he opened in 1972.

His country’s economic instability also induced him to expand his activities and knowhow. Working in colour or black and white, he produced album covers for famous musicians and accepted major commissions from clients like Apple Pie Publicity, a communication agency that represented many Ghanaian companies. He photographed his models in local settings, in front of the city’s monuments, or with oil barrels or metal tubes, celebrating in his deeply personal style the diverse materialities of a capital in perpetual reconstruction.

In parallel with his commercial activity, Barnor continued working as a photojournalist, chronicling daily life in Ghana. He also enjoyed photographing his friends and family members, at his studio, in their homes, and most of all in the streets of Accra, encouraging his subjects to take an active role in the way they appeared before his lens. His images are a headlong plunge into the lifestyle of the time: a young woman leaning on a car dressed in a traditional outfit made of kente cloth; a group of children in a backyard; a family coming out of church on Sunday, dressed in a variety of apparel. These exuberant series from the 1970s and 80s address themes related to individual and community identity, clothing and hairstyles, music and celebrations – activities that became Barnor’s primary focus in the 1980s when he served as the manager of Fee Hi,2 a cultural group made up of young artists.

1. Excerpt from a filmed interview at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronière, June 2019.

2. Ga expression meaning “All is well.”

157

Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant, c. 1970

Cat. 52 Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant with darkroom chemical bottles used as a guide for the colour processing laboratory, Accra, c. 1970

158

159

Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant, c. 1970

Cat. 52 Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant with darkroom chemical bottles used as a guide for the colour processing laboratory, Accra, c. 1970

158

159

A woman in front of the Kwame Nkrumah Circle construction pipes, Accra, early 1970s, vintage contact sheet (detail), 18.5 × 21.5 cm

Cat. 53 Drum-style portrait in front of the Kwame Nkrumah Circle construction pipes, Accra, early 1970s

160

161

A woman in front of the Kwame Nkrumah Circle construction pipes, Accra, early 1970s, vintage contact sheet (detail), 18.5 × 21.5 cm

Cat. 53 Drum-style portrait in front of the Kwame Nkrumah Circle construction pipes, Accra, early 1970s

160

161

Cat. 54 Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant as a seventies icon posing in front of the United Trading Company headquarters, Accra, 1971

163

Cat. 54 Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant as a seventies icon posing in front of the United Trading Company headquarters, Accra, 1971

163

A model posing for Drum magazine in Battersea Park, London, mid-1960s Cat. 55 Margaret Obiri-Yeboah, a friend of James Barnor outside the Sick Hagemeyer store, Accra, c. 1972

164

165

A model posing for Drum magazine in Battersea Park, London, mid-1960s Cat. 55 Margaret Obiri-Yeboah, a friend of James Barnor outside the Sick Hagemeyer store, Accra, c. 1972

164

165

Cat. 56 Sophia Salomon, daughter of James Barnor’s landlady, Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1972

167

Cat. 56 Sophia Salomon, daughter of James Barnor’s landlady, Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1972

167

A little girl during Salah Day (a Muslim celebration), Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1973 Cat. 57 A relative of James Barnor’s landlady in the courtyard of their shared house, Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1971

168

169

A little girl during Salah Day (a Muslim celebration), Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1973 Cat. 57 A relative of James Barnor’s landlady in the courtyard of their shared house, Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1971

168

169

Cat. 58 Fred Barnor with his friend in front of Tip Toe Night Club, Tip Toe Lane, Accra, 1971

171

Cat. 58 Fred Barnor with his friend in front of Tip Toe Night Club, Tip Toe Lane, Accra, 1971

171

Sophia Salomon with two white dolls, Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1971–72

Cat. 59 A little girl carries her doll, Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1972

172

173

Sophia Salomon with two white dolls, Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1971–72

Cat. 59 A little girl carries her doll, Tip Toe area, Kokomlemle, Accra, c. 1972

172

173

Mary Abbey’s friend, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1973, vintage print, 12.5 × 10 cm Cat. 60 Mary Abbey and her friend above a magazine with photographs of China at the desk of Studio X23, Accra, early 1970s

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Mary Abbey’s friend, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1973, vintage print, 12.5 × 10 cm Cat. 60 Mary Abbey and her friend above a magazine with photographs of China at the desk of Studio X23, Accra, early 1970s

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Juliet Sackuah Quao-Sackey, Studio X23, c. 1975, vintage print (detail), 21.3× 16.6 cm

Portrait of a student, Studio X23, c. 1975, vintage print, 12 × 8 cm

Cat. 61 Back view of the “Mbakaa” plaited hairstyle in the courtyard of Studio X23, Accra, 1970s

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Juliet Sackuah Quao-Sackey, Studio X23, c. 1975, vintage print (detail), 21.3× 16.6 cm

Portrait of a student, Studio X23, c. 1975, vintage print, 12 × 8 cm

Cat. 61 Back view of the “Mbakaa” plaited hairstyle in the courtyard of Studio X23, Accra, 1970s

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Relatives of the enstooled Mankrolo during the ceremony, suburb of Accra, c. 1970, vintage contact sheet (detail), 20.5 × 25.5 cm Cat. 62 A young man dressed in kente during J.A. Allotey’s enstoolment as Mankrolo (chief) of Prampram, Accra, 1970s

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Relatives of the enstooled Mankrolo during the ceremony, suburb of Accra, c. 1970, vintage contact sheet (detail), 20.5 × 25.5 cm Cat. 62 A young man dressed in kente during J.A. Allotey’s enstoolment as Mankrolo (chief) of Prampram, Accra, 1970s

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Sister Agoe in the Ever Young Studio, c. 1953, vintage print, 21.2 × 16.6cm

Cat. 63 Sister Agoe in her pink dress, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1972

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Sister Agoe in the Ever Young Studio, c. 1953, vintage print, 21.2 × 16.6cm

Cat. 63 Sister Agoe in her pink dress, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1972

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At Ataa Quarcoopome’s, Accra, early 1970s, vintage contact sheet (detail), 18 × 24 cm

Cat. 64 At Ataa Quarcoopome’s, Accra, early 1970s

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At Ataa Quarcoopome’s, Accra, early 1970s, vintage contact sheet (detail), 18 × 24 cm

Cat. 64 At Ataa Quarcoopome’s, Accra, early 1970s

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Cat. 65 A road accident scene near Accra Brewery, Adabraka, Accra, 1970s

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Cat. 65 A road accident scene near Accra Brewery, Adabraka, Accra, 1970s

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Street posters under Overhead Bridge, Accra, 1974

Cat. 66 A taxi at a bus stop on Ring Road, Accra, 1974

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Street posters under Overhead Bridge, Accra, 1974

Cat. 66 A taxi at a bus stop on Ring Road, Accra, 1974

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Cat. 67 Young boys climbing up coconut trees in a plantation in the fishing village of Kokrobite, near Accra, 1970s

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Cat. 67 Young boys climbing up coconut trees in a plantation in the fishing village of Kokrobite, near Accra, 1970s

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Participants in a sports competition, Accra Stadium, 1970s, vintage contact sheet (detail), 12.5 × 16.5 cm Cat. 68 Accra Hearts of Oak player tying his shoe during practice, Accra Stadium, 1973

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Participants in a sports competition, Accra Stadium, 1970s, vintage contact sheet (detail), 12.5 × 16.5 cm Cat. 68 Accra Hearts of Oak player tying his shoe during practice, Accra Stadium, 1973

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A music group photographed for overseas promotion in Mensah Guinea Beach, Accra, 1970s, vintage print, 5 × 8 cm

Cat. 69 A performance at a drum and dance festival at the Arts Centre, Accra, c. 1971

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A music group photographed for overseas promotion in Mensah Guinea Beach, Accra, 1970s, vintage print, 5 × 8 cm

Cat. 69 A performance at a drum and dance festival at the Arts Centre, Accra, c. 1971

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Advertising shoot for a tyre supply company taken at the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, c. 1974–75

Cat. 70 Mavis “Ewa” (“young” Mavis) posing with Smarties on a lorry for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

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Advertising shoot for a tyre supply company taken at the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, c. 1974–75

Cat. 70 Mavis “Ewa” (“young” Mavis) posing with Smarties on a lorry for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

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Cat. 71 Mother and son in the Lona printing press courtyard, Studio X23, Accra, 1970s

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Cat. 71 Mother and son in the Lona printing press courtyard, Studio X23, Accra, 1970s

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Portrait of Naa Ayeley Attoh, 1970s, vintage contact sheet (detail), 20 × 13 cm Cat. 72 Naa Ayeley Attoh, James Barnor’s niece, in a psychedelic dress on Lutterodt Circle, near Jamestown, Accra, 1974

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Portrait of Naa Ayeley Attoh, 1970s, vintage contact sheet (detail), 20 × 13 cm Cat. 72 Naa Ayeley Attoh, James Barnor’s niece, in a psychedelic dress on Lutterodt Circle, near Jamestown, Accra, 1974

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A shoot for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

Cat. 73 Model posing for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

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A shoot for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

Cat. 73 Model posing for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

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A scene at the petrol station for the Agip calendar during the Ghana campaign for changing to driving on the right (Nifa means “right” in Twi), Accra, 1973 Cat. 74 Filling up the Studio X23 car at the Agip petrol station for its 1974 calendar, Accra, 1973

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A scene at the petrol station for the Agip calendar during the Ghana campaign for changing to driving on the right (Nifa means “right” in Twi), Accra, 1973 Cat. 74 Filling up the Studio X23 car at the Agip petrol station for its 1974 calendar, Accra, 1973

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A shoot for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

Cat. 75 Model with petrol drums for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

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A shoot for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

Cat. 75 Model with petrol drums for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

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A shoot for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

Cat. 76 An industrial setting at a rail yard for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

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A shoot for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

Cat. 76 An industrial setting at a rail yard for the 1974 Agip calendar, Accra, 1973

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Record sleeve for Love Nortey and the Happy Stars’ Honhom Kronkron (“Holy Spirit”), designed by E. E. Lamptey from James Barnor’s picture, between 1974 and 1976, 31 × 31 cm

Cat. 77 Love Nortey of the Happy Stars band in front of the WATO nightclub, on the edge of Jamestown, Accra, between 1974 and 1976

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Record sleeve for Love Nortey and the Happy Stars’ Honhom Kronkron (“Holy Spirit”), designed by E. E. Lamptey from James Barnor’s picture, between 1974 and 1976, 31 × 31 cm

Cat. 77 Love Nortey of the Happy Stars band in front of the WATO nightclub, on the edge of Jamestown, Accra, between 1974 and 1976

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Record sleeve for the Youngsters Band’s Akwadaa Wesewa designed by E. E Lamptey from James Barnor’s picture, c. 1975–76, 31 × 31 cm

Cat. 78 The Youngsters Band posing for a record sleeve in front of a map of Africa at the Old Polo Ground, Accra, c. 1975–76

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Record sleeve for the Youngsters Band’s Akwadaa Wesewa designed by E. E Lamptey from James Barnor’s picture, c. 1975–76, 31 × 31 cm

Cat. 78 The Youngsters Band posing for a record sleeve in front of a map of Africa at the Old Polo Ground, Accra, c. 1975–76

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Record sleeve for E. K. Nyame’s Sankofa, designed by E. E. Lamptey from James Barnor’s picture, released in 1975, 31 × 31 cm

Cat. 79 E. K. Nyame, the legendary Ghanaian musician with his clarinet for a record cover, Accra, c. 1975

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Record sleeve for E. K. Nyame’s Sankofa, designed by E. E. Lamptey from James Barnor’s picture, released in 1975, 31 × 31 cm

Cat. 79 E. K. Nyame, the legendary Ghanaian musician with his clarinet for a record cover, Accra, c. 1975

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Record sleeve for Tony Sarfo and the Funky Afrosibi’s Superman, designed by E. E. Lamptey, released in 1976, 31 × 31 cm

Cat. 80 Highlife singer Tony Sarfo photographed for his Superman record sleeve, Studio X23, Accra, 1976

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Record sleeve for Tony Sarfo and the Funky Afrosibi’s Superman, designed by E. E. Lamptey, released in 1976, 31 × 31 cm

Cat. 80 Highlife singer Tony Sarfo photographed for his Superman record sleeve, Studio X23, Accra, 1976

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Photoshoot in Studio X23, Accra, April 1977, vintage contact sheet (detail), 20.5 × 25 cm

Cat. 81 A young highlife talent who disappeared before his career took off, Studio X23, Accra, 1977

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Photoshoot in Studio X23, Accra, April 1977, vintage contact sheet (detail), 20.5 × 25 cm

Cat. 81 A young highlife talent who disappeared before his career took off, Studio X23, Accra, 1977

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Cat. 82 A clothes seller from the store opposite the Studio X23, Accra, 1970s

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Cat. 82 A clothes seller from the store opposite the Studio X23, Accra, 1970s

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Cat. 83 Close-up portrait of Mr Sammy Tetteh’s secretary, Accra, 1970s

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Cat. 83 Close-up portrait of Mr Sammy Tetteh’s secretary, Accra, 1970s

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Cat. 84 Laura Tawiah Quartey, Accra, late 1970s

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Cat. 84 Laura Tawiah Quartey, Accra, late 1970s

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Participants in the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Methodist Church wearing commemorative outfits, 1976, vintage contact sheet, 25 × 20.5 cm Cat. 85 150th anniversary celebration of the Methodist Church in Ghana at Black Star Square, Accra, 1976

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Participants in the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Methodist Church wearing commemorative outfits, 1976, vintage contact sheet, 25 × 20.5 cm Cat. 85 150th anniversary celebration of the Methodist Church in Ghana at Black Star Square, Accra, 1976

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Traffic police officer captured opposite the Holy Trinity Cathedral on High Street, Accra, 1970s

Cat. 86 A traffic officer on duty in the business district (Atta Mills High Street), Accra, 1970s

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Traffic police officer captured opposite the Holy Trinity Cathedral on High Street, Accra, 1970s

Cat. 86 A traffic officer on duty in the business district (Atta Mills High Street), Accra, 1970s

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Photoshoot of a musician performing outside Salaga Market, Accra, 1977

Cat. 87 Partying in the seventies. Mr Kotey’s birthday celebration, Accra, 1970s

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Photoshoot of a musician performing outside Salaga Market, Accra, 1977

Cat. 87 Partying in the seventies. Mr Kotey’s birthday celebration, Accra, 1970s

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Dancing at the Swinging Safari nightclub, Accra, 1970s, vintage contact sheet, 20 × 13.5 cm

Cat. 88 Private performance in a nightclub during the Trade Fair, Accra, 1978

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Dancing at the Swinging Safari nightclub, Accra, 1970s, vintage contact sheet, 20 × 13.5 cm

Cat. 88 Private performance in a nightclub during the Trade Fair, Accra, 1978

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Other Members of the Odd Fellows’ Lodge, Kade (Eastern Region), Ghana, 1970s

Cat. 89 Two members of the Odd Fellows’ Lodge, Kade (Eastern Region), Ghana, 1970s

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Other Members of the Odd Fellows’ Lodge, Kade (Eastern Region), Ghana, 1970s

Cat. 89 Two members of the Odd Fellows’ Lodge, Kade (Eastern Region), Ghana, 1970s

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Cat. 90 The photographer Felicia Abban outside the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, late 1970s

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Cat. 90 The photographer Felicia Abban outside the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, late 1970s

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Wedding guests at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, late 1970s, vintage print, 21.2 × 16.4 cm Cat. 91 A wedding guest surrounded by women dressed in Ghanaian (left) and European (right) fashion at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, late 1970s

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Wedding guests at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, late 1970s, vintage print, 21.2 × 16.4 cm Cat. 91 A wedding guest surrounded by women dressed in Ghanaian (left) and European (right) fashion at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, late 1970s

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A market woman wearing traditional attire with kente cloth and tekua hairstyle for the Homowo festival at the Ga Mantse Palace, Kaneshie, Accra, early 1970s, vintage print, 25.5 × 20.5 cm Cat. 92 A wedding guest in the park behind the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, c. 1971

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A market woman wearing traditional attire with kente cloth and tekua hairstyle for the Homowo festival at the Ga Mantse Palace, Kaneshie, Accra, early 1970s, vintage print, 25.5 × 20.5 cm Cat. 92 A wedding guest in the park behind the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, c. 1971

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Fashion pictures, Accra, 1970s, vintage contact sheet, 16.5 × 21.5 cm

Cat. 93 Family members during the engagement of James Barnor’s cousin, Amamomo, Accra, late 1970s

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Fashion pictures, Accra, 1970s, vintage contact sheet, 16.5 × 21.5 cm

Cat. 93 Family members during the engagement of James Barnor’s cousin, Amamomo, Accra, late 1970s

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Cat. 94 A baby boy snuggled on his sister’s lap, Accra, 1979

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Cat. 94 A baby boy snuggled on his sister’s lap, Accra, 1979

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Mavis and Mary Barnor with an Agfa advertising ball, Accra, c. 1970–71

Cat. 95 Patrick Chinery and Peter Swaniker in matching outfits, Accra, c. 1980

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Mavis and Mary Barnor with an Agfa advertising ball, Accra, c. 1970–71

Cat. 95 Patrick Chinery and Peter Swaniker in matching outfits, Accra, c. 1980

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Advertising shot for the Roll Boy multicolour printer, Accra, 1971

Cat. 96 Advertising shot for the Appiah Menka Complex Ltd., a soap company from Kumasi, Accra, 1980s

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Advertising shot for the Roll Boy multicolour printer, Accra, 1971

Cat. 96 Advertising shot for the Appiah Menka Complex Ltd., a soap company from Kumasi, Accra, 1980s

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Double portrait of a nurse and friend of James Barnor, Studio X23, Accra, mid 1970s, vintage print, 16.5 × 21.5 cm

Cat. 97 An elegant friend at Studio X23, Accra, between 1980 and 1987

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Double portrait of a nurse and friend of James Barnor, Studio X23, Accra, mid 1970s, vintage print, 16.5 × 21.5 cm

Cat. 97 An elegant friend at Studio X23, Accra, between 1980 and 1987

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Cat. 98 Printmaking in the darkroom, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1983

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Cat. 98 Printmaking in the darkroom, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1983

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Love Nortey from the Happy Stars group looking at his record Sibi, Studio X23, Accra, mid 1970s, vintage print (detail), 18 × 13 cm Cat. 99 James Barnor’s studio assistant stepping out of the darkroom, Studio X23, Accra, between 1983 and 1987

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Love Nortey from the Happy Stars group looking at his record Sibi, Studio X23, Accra, mid 1970s, vintage print (detail), 18 × 13 cm Cat. 99 James Barnor’s studio assistant stepping out of the darkroom, Studio X23, Accra, between 1983 and 1987

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James Barnor (in the middle) with his group Ebaa Hi Gbiko (“All will be well one day”) after a week of performances, Accra, early 1980s, vintage print, 20.6 × 25.3 cm Cat. 100 James Barnor’s group, renamed Fee Hi (“All is well”) performing for visiting American musicians, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1987

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James Barnor (in the middle) with his group Ebaa Hi Gbiko (“All will be well one day”) after a week of performances, Accra, early 1980s, vintage print, 20.6 × 25.3 cm Cat. 100 James Barnor’s group, renamed Fee Hi (“All is well”) performing for visiting American musicians, Studio X23, Accra, c. 1987

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INTERVIE W WITH JAMES BARNOR HANS ULRICH OBRIST HANS ULRICH OBRIST: I’d like to begin with your own beginnings and touch upon some of the individuals who shaped your early trajectory as a photographer. At the very start, Emanuel M. Odonkor played a very important role because he gave you your first camera. Can you tell me about him?

JAMES BARNOR: I became a teacher as soon as I left school, and it was by chance that one of the other teachers, Emanuel M. Odonkor (fig. 1), gave me a camera when I started, and that was what led me to photography.

Fig. 1 Emanuel M. Odonkor (right), with other teachers at the beach in Accra, c. 1946–47, vintage contact print, 8.5 × 6 cm

Odonkor was a craft teacher, the weaving master in the school who taught both basket and cross weaving. I still don’t know the reason why, whether he thought I had photography in my heart or on my mind, but he gave me the camera. I didn’t know anything about it; he didn’t tell me anything about it either. That was my first camera, a Kodak Baby Brownie.

When I was at school I seemed strict to my friends, who often teased me by saying that I should go into the police force when I left. When I thought about combining photography and policing, I thought I should be a police photographer. In fact, I later applied and was nearly ready to be taken on, but I had to wait for a course to be arranged, and around that time my uncle retired and gave me his photographic equipment. I found photography, but I could have gone on to do other things too.

HUO: You served an apprenticeship under your cousin, J. P. D. Dodoo, but interestingly you’ve said that it was really your other family member, Julius Aikins, who introduced you to photography; he shared new ideas, literature, magazines and the work of other exciting photographers, and he also encouraged you to step outside of the studio. That’s of course a very important step, to leave the studio and to work with reportage and street photography.

Can you tell us about those formative experiences?

JB: Photography is in my family. There were three practising photographers while I was growing up: my maternal uncle, William Ankrah, and there was also Julius Aikins and J. P. D. Dodoo. Dodoo was a very prominent photographer, I was sent to him to learn. I served as his apprentice because I was part of the family. He taught me for free, but I would say that the course was rigid.

There was no syllabus, so I studied what came into the studio, the jobs at hand. Along the way, I accidentally got to know Aikins (fig. 2). Somehow, I met him on the street

257

INTERVIE W WITH JAMES BARNOR HANS ULRICH OBRIST HANS ULRICH OBRIST: I’d like to begin with your own beginnings and touch upon some of the individuals who shaped your early trajectory as a photographer. At the very start, Emanuel M. Odonkor played a very important role because he gave you your first camera. Can you tell me about him?

JAMES BARNOR: I became a teacher as soon as I left school, and it was by chance that one of the other teachers, Emanuel M. Odonkor (fig. 1), gave me a camera when I started, and that was what led me to photography.

Fig. 1 Emanuel M. Odonkor (right), with other teachers at the beach in Accra, c. 1946–47, vintage contact print, 8.5 × 6 cm

Odonkor was a craft teacher, the weaving master in the school who taught both basket and cross weaving. I still don’t know the reason why, whether he thought I had photography in my heart or on my mind, but he gave me the camera. I didn’t know anything about it; he didn’t tell me anything about it either. That was my first camera, a Kodak Baby Brownie.

When I was at school I seemed strict to my friends, who often teased me by saying that I should go into the police force when I left. When I thought about combining photography and policing, I thought I should be a police photographer. In fact, I later applied and was nearly ready to be taken on, but I had to wait for a course to be arranged, and around that time my uncle retired and gave me his photographic equipment. I found photography, but I could have gone on to do other things too.

HUO: You served an apprenticeship under your cousin, J. P. D. Dodoo, but interestingly you’ve said that it was really your other family member, Julius Aikins, who introduced you to photography; he shared new ideas, literature, magazines and the work of other exciting photographers, and he also encouraged you to step outside of the studio. That’s of course a very important step, to leave the studio and to work with reportage and street photography.

Can you tell us about those formative experiences?

JB: Photography is in my family. There were three practising photographers while I was growing up: my maternal uncle, William Ankrah, and there was also Julius Aikins and J. P. D. Dodoo. Dodoo was a very prominent photographer, I was sent to him to learn. I served as his apprentice because I was part of the family. He taught me for free, but I would say that the course was rigid.

There was no syllabus, so I studied what came into the studio, the jobs at hand. Along the way, I accidentally got to know Aikins (fig. 2). Somehow, I met him on the street

257

HUO: Can you tell me about the very beginnings of your studio?

JB: At the time, only one or two people had what we know as a studio in Ghana. The darkroom was the main thing, not the studio. People photographed with daylight in the yard because you had to pay for electricity, while daylight was free. I started by using the equipment my uncle gave me when he retired, working from our family home and taking pictures outside in the street. Whenever someone came, I took them outside and hung my backdrop. When people passed by, they could watch me work.

Later I made an excuse to look after my aunt’s room when she was travelling. I brought in electricity and started printing and developing for people there. I wouldn’t have clamoured for a studio because I had somewhere to sleep and a darkroom, but eventually I had to give the room back and find somewhere else. Luckily, I found a place and it changed my life. It was big and near the harbour, next to a hotel.

Fig. 2 Julius Aikins in front of James Barnor’s first studio, when he came to show him his Linhof camera, Arena, Accra, early 1950s

when I didn’t know him. I recognised him, and I asked, ‘Are you Mr Aikins?’ Straight away he invited me into his home to speak with him. Meeting him changed my view of photography. I think he was a self-taught photographer. He learnt from books and produced everything by himself. When I met him, he was working at the West African Photographic Service, which was created during the war to sell photography within Africa. I’m not sure what he did there, perhaps he was a technician or a darkroom man, but he wasn’t one of the photographers.

At that time, only English white people were photographers. It was only after independence that Ghanaians or Black people took over the task of going out and taking photographs. But meeting him at home, watching him work, and looking at the books he suggested, helped me a great deal.

HUO: One of your first photographs was taken with your Baby Brownie, with 127 roll film, of a schoolgirl in 1947 (fig. 3). Can you tell me about these very early photographs from the late 1940s?

JB: That photograph was the very first shot that I saw through a viewfinder, and she was one of the students in the school where I taught in 1946. The camera had a wide-angle lens. I had no pre-planned idea of going in close, whatever I saw in the viewfinder I photographed.

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Fig. 4 Outside view of the Ever Young Studio, Accra, 1953

Fig. 3 Beatrice Okaijah in the first photograph James Barnor remembers taking, with a Kodak Baby Brownie 127 camera, St. Mary’s Parish School, Accra, c. 1946, vintage contact print, 8.5 × 6 cm

259

HUO: Can you tell me about the very beginnings of your studio?

JB: At the time, only one or two people had what we know as a studio in Ghana. The darkroom was the main thing, not the studio. People photographed with daylight in the yard because you had to pay for electricity, while daylight was free. I started by using the equipment my uncle gave me when he retired, working from our family home and taking pictures outside in the street. Whenever someone came, I took them outside and hung my backdrop. When people passed by, they could watch me work.

Later I made an excuse to look after my aunt’s room when she was travelling. I brought in electricity and started printing and developing for people there. I wouldn’t have clamoured for a studio because I had somewhere to sleep and a darkroom, but eventually I had to give the room back and find somewhere else. Luckily, I found a place and it changed my life. It was big and near the harbour, next to a hotel.

Fig. 2 Julius Aikins in front of James Barnor’s first studio, when he came to show him his Linhof camera, Arena, Accra, early 1950s

when I didn’t know him. I recognised him, and I asked, ‘Are you Mr Aikins?’ Straight away he invited me into his home to speak with him. Meeting him changed my view of photography. I think he was a self-taught photographer. He learnt from books and produced everything by himself. When I met him, he was working at the West African Photographic Service, which was created during the war to sell photography within Africa. I’m not sure what he did there, perhaps he was a technician or a darkroom man, but he wasn’t one of the photographers.

At that time, only English white people were photographers. It was only after independence that Ghanaians or Black people took over the task of going out and taking photographs. But meeting him at home, watching him work, and looking at the books he suggested, helped me a great deal.

HUO: One of your first photographs was taken with your Baby Brownie, with 127 roll film, of a schoolgirl in 1947 (fig. 3). Can you tell me about these very early photographs from the late 1940s?

JB: That photograph was the very first shot that I saw through a viewfinder, and she was one of the students in the school where I taught in 1946. The camera had a wide-angle lens. I had no pre-planned idea of going in close, whatever I saw in the viewfinder I photographed.

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Fig. 4 Outside view of the Ever Young Studio, Accra, 1953

Fig. 3 Beatrice Okaijah in the first photograph James Barnor remembers taking, with a Kodak Baby Brownie 127 camera, St. Mary’s Parish School, Accra, c. 1946, vintage contact print, 8.5 × 6 cm

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HUO: It opened in 1953, and you called it Ever Young.

You explained that it was based on the story of Iduna’s Grove, which you beautifully summarised on a Post-it for my Instagram account.

JB: Yes, it came from an excerpt of that story, which we studied at school for English comprehension. Iduna, the beautiful young goddess of the Norseman, lived in a pretty grove called Ever Young. She had a golden casket full of the most wonderful apples. A hero might come, tired and weary, like me, to Iduna’s Grove feeling he was growing old. Then Iduna would give him an apple. As soon as he’d eaten it, he’d feel fresh and young again. It wasn’t surprising that Iduna’s Grove was never lonely, always full.

But what was surprising was that the fruit basket was

never empty. As soon as the last fruit was given away, the basket was filled again by an invisible hand. That’s where Ever Young came from.

Today, Photoshop has taken over, whereas before photographers spent an hour and a half on one face alone with a very sharp pencil, retouching fine lines. The essence of my studio profession is retouching, that’s the training I had even though I wasn’t perfect. I thought that if someone came in, I’d make them look younger. So, if I open a studio, what should I call it? Ever Young.

You can do all sorts of things creatively with photography. That’s where the magic comes in. I’ve made cut-outs before, using scissors to cut out the background, and then there are things that you can do with graphic design that change things. Today, photographers achieve marvellous things with Photoshop, more magical than we ever produced with a pencil. The magic is even more real, if anything.

HUO: The first picture you took at Ever Young was a portrait of a student (cat. 4). It’s interesting because there was already a famous figurine in the photograph, it appears in many of your images.

Can you tell me more about it?

JB: When I was an apprentice my cousin had paper flowers in a vase, and when a sitter came we placed it in the frame (fig. 5). It helps you to focus. With a big camera you must focus carefully. So that’s where I got the idea.

When I started working on my own I saw that figurine in an auctioneer’s shop and bought it.

Fig. 5 Two girls photographed during James Barnor’s apprenticeship at Yehowa Aakwe studio, Zion Street, Jamestown, Accra, c. 1948–49, vintage print, 13 × 9 cm

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HUO: While we may imagine the studio to be rather formal, for wedding or family portraits, you previously told me that Ever Young closely resembled a community centre. It was always full, lots of young people came and it was a meeting place with lively discussions and parties that carried on late into the night. Can you speak more about the studio and its energy?

JB: I invited the youth into my studio, both girls and boys, and we discussed all sorts of things. It was like a community centre because there was music there all the time and the Sea View Hotel was only two doors away, the number one spot in Accra. People from the hotel would come over too. We didn’t have drinks there, but if they wanted one they’d walk over to the hotel bar. They hosted dances at the weekend and people would come over to the studio at night, whether I’d gone to take photographs or not.

They’d bring their girlfriends and have their photographs taken before they went home. When I opened the studio, it became a novelty because there weren’t many studios which could take photographs at night with electricity.

I remember perhaps three places, but they were run by elders, and I was young. Some of the elders were too far removed from the younger community to get close to them like I was.

HUO: You’ve talked about the differences between working in the studio and working out in the street, explaining that it was like living two different lives.

That’s something I’m curious to know more about, because you were Ghana’s first photojournalist, working for the Daily Graphic. We can see from your early work that you left the studio and went with your handheld camera in and around Accra.

Can you tell me about your experiences of these two different lives?

JB: I started using a small camera while I was working as an apprentice. It wasn’t expensive, and I was just as familiar with the small camera as the large film camera we used on a tripod in the studio. When I was an apprentice to Dodoo, the sight of a small camera was taboo. One time he said to me that if I started taking pictures with a small camera, I’d get distracted and I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what he was teaching me, which was retouching, using a field camera and doing things the slow way. But with books and a small camera you can roam about. When people came to me I took them out to places like the cemetery, somewhere where I could get a good background, and photographed them there. I also photographed activities in town.

One day, the Daily Mirror came over as they needed a photographer to start working for the new Daily Graphic publication and the person tasked with finding a photographer was sent to Dodoo. He told them, “I don’t do that type of work. But I know somebody who does.”

Dodoo directed them to me and told them that I would be good at newspaper work. Getting into that field took me into the world that I enjoyed. We had to chase the important people, and that’s where the small camera helped, along with journalistic ideas like writing captions and small stories.

It consisted of travelling, meeting people, attending functions and even going to sports events like football matches or races, which the Graphic often covered. We covered sportsmen like boxer Roy Ankrah. When he

Fig. 6 Self-portrait with Kwame Nkrumah, Roy Ankrah and his wife Rebecca, Accra, c. 1952

returned after the war and started boxing in Ghana, it was the Graphic who promoted him. We followed him everywhere, which helped him to become a famous personality. When he won the Commonwealth featherweight belt, Drum magazine asked me to shoot a feature on him.

One day I took him out jogging, another time I took him out shopping with his wife. Once when I was photographing Ankrah with his family at home, Kwame Nkrumah sent his driver out to collect him. I asked the driver to pass by my studio to pick me up too, so I went along and photographed them both. While I was listening to them, I noticed how Nkrumah was interested in the welfare of all these people in their various fields: politicians, sportsmen, and so on. We were there together for about one hour, Ankrah, his wife Rebecca, Nkrumah and me (fig. 6).

I went anywhere there was news. I started meeting these people before we had independence, so when the political climate started to heat up, the Graphic was already there to cover it. Previously the local papers were printed by letterpress, so they didn’t need daily photographs.

They used old photographs, and even then to get a block made took some time. But when the Graphic came, photographs were shot and printed the same day.

I was also lucky enough to be asked by the Black Star photographic agency to represent them and take

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HUO: It opened in 1953, and you called it Ever Young.

You explained that it was based on the story of Iduna’s Grove, which you beautifully summarised on a Post-it for my Instagram account.

JB: Yes, it came from an excerpt of that story, which we studied at school for English comprehension. Iduna, the beautiful young goddess of the Norseman, lived in a pretty grove called Ever Young. She had a golden casket full of the most wonderful apples. A hero might come, tired and weary, like me, to Iduna’s Grove feeling he was growing old. Then Iduna would give him an apple. As soon as he’d eaten it, he’d feel fresh and young again. It wasn’t surprising that Iduna’s Grove was never lonely, always full.

But what was surprising was that the fruit basket was

never empty. As soon as the last fruit was given away, the basket was filled again by an invisible hand. That’s where Ever Young came from.

Today, Photoshop has taken over, whereas before photographers spent an hour and a half on one face alone with a very sharp pencil, retouching fine lines. The essence of my studio profession is retouching, that’s the training I had even though I wasn’t perfect. I thought that if someone came in, I’d make them look younger. So, if I open a studio, what should I call it? Ever Young.

You can do all sorts of things creatively with photography. That’s where the magic comes in. I’ve made cut-outs before, using scissors to cut out the background, and then there are things that you can do with graphic design that change things. Today, photographers achieve marvellous things with Photoshop, more magical than we ever produced with a pencil. The magic is even more real, if anything.

HUO: The first picture you took at Ever Young was a portrait of a student (cat. 4). It’s interesting because there was already a famous figurine in the photograph, it appears in many of your images.

Can you tell me more about it?

JB: When I was an apprentice my cousin had paper flowers in a vase, and when a sitter came we placed it in the frame (fig. 5). It helps you to focus. With a big camera you must focus carefully. So that’s where I got the idea.

When I started working on my own I saw that figurine in an auctioneer’s shop and bought it.

Fig. 5 Two girls photographed during James Barnor’s apprenticeship at Yehowa Aakwe studio, Zion Street, Jamestown, Accra, c. 1948–49, vintage print, 13 × 9 cm

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HUO: While we may imagine the studio to be rather formal, for wedding or family portraits, you previously told me that Ever Young closely resembled a community centre. It was always full, lots of young people came and it was a meeting place with lively discussions and parties that carried on late into the night. Can you speak more about the studio and its energy?

JB: I invited the youth into my studio, both girls and boys, and we discussed all sorts of things. It was like a community centre because there was music there all the time and the Sea View Hotel was only two doors away, the number one spot in Accra. People from the hotel would come over too. We didn’t have drinks there, but if they wanted one they’d walk over to the hotel bar. They hosted dances at the weekend and people would come over to the studio at night, whether I’d gone to take photographs or not.

They’d bring their girlfriends and have their photographs taken before they went home. When I opened the studio, it became a novelty because there weren’t many studios which could take photographs at night with electricity.

I remember perhaps three places, but they were run by elders, and I was young. Some of the elders were too far removed from the younger community to get close to them like I was.

HUO: You’ve talked about the differences between working in the studio and working out in the street, explaining that it was like living two different lives.

That’s something I’m curious to know more about, because you were Ghana’s first photojournalist, working for the Daily Graphic. We can see from your early work that you left the studio and went with your handheld camera in and around Accra.

Can you tell me about your experiences of these two different lives?

JB: I started using a small camera while I was working as an apprentice. It wasn’t expensive, and I was just as familiar with the small camera as the large film camera we used on a tripod in the studio. When I was an apprentice to Dodoo, the sight of a small camera was taboo. One time he said to me that if I started taking pictures with a small camera, I’d get distracted and I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what he was teaching me, which was retouching, using a field camera and doing things the slow way. But with books and a small camera you can roam about. When people came to me I took them out to places like the cemetery, somewhere where I could get a good background, and photographed them there. I also photographed activities in town.

One day, the Daily Mirror came over as they needed a photographer to start working for the new Daily Graphic publication and the person tasked with finding a photographer was sent to Dodoo. He told them, “I don’t do that type of work. But I know somebody who does.”

Dodoo directed them to me and told them that I would be good at newspaper work. Getting into that field took me into the world that I enjoyed. We had to chase the important people, and that’s where the small camera helped, along with journalistic ideas like writing captions and small stories.

It consisted of travelling, meeting people, attending functions and even going to sports events like football matches or races, which the Graphic often covered. We covered sportsmen like boxer Roy Ankrah. When he

Fig. 6 Self-portrait with Kwame Nkrumah, Roy Ankrah and his wife Rebecca, Accra, c. 1952

returned after the war and started boxing in Ghana, it was the Graphic who promoted him. We followed him everywhere, which helped him to become a famous personality. When he won the Commonwealth featherweight belt, Drum magazine asked me to shoot a feature on him.

One day I took him out jogging, another time I took him out shopping with his wife. Once when I was photographing Ankrah with his family at home, Kwame Nkrumah sent his driver out to collect him. I asked the driver to pass by my studio to pick me up too, so I went along and photographed them both. While I was listening to them, I noticed how Nkrumah was interested in the welfare of all these people in their various fields: politicians, sportsmen, and so on. We were there together for about one hour, Ankrah, his wife Rebecca, Nkrumah and me (fig. 6).

I went anywhere there was news. I started meeting these people before we had independence, so when the political climate started to heat up, the Graphic was already there to cover it. Previously the local papers were printed by letterpress, so they didn’t need daily photographs.

They used old photographs, and even then to get a block made took some time. But when the Graphic came, photographs were shot and printed the same day.

I was also lucky enough to be asked by the Black Star photographic agency to represent them and take

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photographs of Ghana’s independence, as well as for Drum. So those opportunities gave me other chances too.

If nobody had taken photographs these parts of history would have been lost.

HUO: You went out and photographed the people around you, but you also documented a great deal of change. Your images became very political because you witnessed the huge transformation of Ghana fighting for its independence. As an apprentice you witnessed the riots prior to independence in 1948.

What do you remember of that time? It would be wonderful to hear your memories, because you also met Nkrumah, who you just mentioned, very early in your career. Was it already clear to you that he was going to become a historic figure?

JB: It started with a boycott of European goods. We said, “These things are too expensive, we won’t buy them.”

This helped to aggravate the people, and they were prepared to do anything. Then the riots came, and people were going out looting. I remember one time when I was in the darkroom, I went outside to throw away some used chemicals and Dodoo said, “You’re not going anywhere.

Go back inside.” The people were stirred up and then Nkrumah was detained with some other activists. They went on to win a general election, and that’s how they were released. I met him and photographed him on that day in 1951 (fig. 7).

At that time, Nkrumah was already the Secretary General of Dr J.B. Danquah’s party, and very popular. He focused on young people, so the youth liked him. I liked his ideas, but I didn’t photograph him politically. I photographed all the members of the assembly and got to know them all (fig. 8). I photographed Danquah at the assembly and in his home, and I met Nana Ofori Atta II, who was a member of the legislative assembly preparing us for independence. I also photographed the Tali-Naa, one of the chiefs from the Northern Region of Ghana at his house in Tamale and all the members of that assembly too. I feel very proud of these things. I didn’t become a fanatic for any party, which meant that I could work with anybody I wanted. At that time, I was on my own, so I learnt how to move about, taking pictures outside and not just in the studio where people would come to me. It was my interest in photographing the people who made news.

I have recorded all these things, and they’re now being used as history. If nobody had photographed them these moments would have been lost.

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HUO: Much has been written about photography changing during the Nkrumah period. At the beginning of your career, photography in West Africa was closely associated with modernism.

It was a formal set up, but that changed, and a certain informality entered. I would love to hear more about this transition from your perspective.

JB: Before and during my time there were other photographers, but very few took to the streets because there were no outlets for their photographs to be published, not until the Graphic started up. Photographers also started using small cameras and photographing people on the move, the political parties and the changes.

They photographed every meeting. Nkrumah also had his own ideas about publicity, he never missed a chance. He encouraged the photographers around him and for photography to be used in that way.

I called Makola market my second studio. If I took my camera there I would have a complete set of photographs within thirty minutes. I remember when I was working for the Graphic, if I needed a photograph to fill a space on our pages I’d take my bicycle and my camera and go there to photograph people acting informally, their natural behaviour. The market stalls themselves always made good pictures, with the way the market women would arrange the produce. Sometimes people didn’t allow their photographs to be taken, but those that did liked it when they saw the photographs published in the Daily Graphic a few days later.

HUO: You captured the historic moments of independence for Ghana in 1957, but also of the amazing celebrations afterwards.

People came to Ghana from all over the world.

How did you come to cover the independence celebrations for British newspapers?

JB: There was a special picture which allowed me to cover the independence celebrations for the Telegraph, a picture of my son playing with a beer bottle. I showed it at the time to an editor of Drum, and when he went to the UK he wrote to me asking if I could send him the negatives. He then sent them to Black Star, who sold a copy to the Telegraph, who in turn printed it in a weekend edition. When it came around to the celebrations, I was on their books. I was the only photographer they knew in Ghana: “Who do we know? We have James Barnor.” They wrote to me and asked if I’d like to represent them. It came as a shock! I had a friend, Jim Moxton,

Fig. 7 Kwame Nkrumah, just released from prison, after winning Gold Coast legislative election, with Convention People’s Party colleagues, Accra, 1951

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photographs of Ghana’s independence, as well as for Drum. So those opportunities gave me other chances too.

If nobody had taken photographs these parts of history would have been lost.

HUO: You went out and photographed the people around you, but you also documented a great deal of change. Your images became very political because you witnessed the huge transformation of Ghana fighting for its independence. As an apprentice you witnessed the riots prior to independence in 1948.

What do you remember of that time? It would be wonderful to hear your memories, because you also met Nkrumah, who you just mentioned, very early in your career. Was it already clear to you that he was going to become a historic figure?

JB: It started with a boycott of European goods. We said, “These things are too expensive, we won’t buy them.”

This helped to aggravate the people, and they were prepared to do anything. Then the riots came, and people were going out looting. I remember one time when I was in the darkroom, I went outside to throw away some used chemicals and Dodoo said, “You’re not going anywhere.

Go back inside.” The people were stirred up and then Nkrumah was detained with some other activists. They went on to win a general election, and that’s how they were released. I met him and photographed him on that day in 1951 (fig. 7).

At that time, Nkrumah was already the Secretary General of Dr J.B. Danquah’s party, and very popular. He focused on young people, so the youth liked him. I liked his ideas, but I didn’t photograph him politically. I photographed all the members of the assembly and got to know them all (fig. 8). I photographed Danquah at the assembly and in his home, and I met Nana Ofori Atta II, who was a member of the legislative assembly preparing us for independence. I also photographed the Tali-Naa, one of the chiefs from the Northern Region of Ghana at his house in Tamale and all the members of that assembly too. I feel very proud of these things. I didn’t become a fanatic for any party, which meant that I could work with anybody I wanted. At that time, I was on my own, so I learnt how to move about, taking pictures outside and not just in the studio where people would come to me. It was my interest in photographing the people who made news.

I have recorded all these things, and they’re now being used as history. If nobody had photographed them these moments would have been lost.

262

HUO: Much has been written about photography changing during the Nkrumah period. At the beginning of your career, photography in West Africa was closely associated with modernism.

It was a formal set up, but that changed, and a certain informality entered. I would love to hear more about this transition from your perspective.

JB: Before and during my time there were other photographers, but very few took to the streets because there were no outlets for their photographs to be published, not until the Graphic started up. Photographers also started using small cameras and photographing people on the move, the political parties and the changes.

They photographed every meeting. Nkrumah also had his own ideas about publicity, he never missed a chance. He encouraged the photographers around him and for photography to be used in that way.

I called Makola market my second studio. If I took my camera there I would have a complete set of photographs within thirty minutes. I remember when I was working for the Graphic, if I needed a photograph to fill a space on our pages I’d take my bicycle and my camera and go there to photograph people acting informally, their natural behaviour. The market stalls themselves always made good pictures, with the way the market women would arrange the produce. Sometimes people didn’t allow their photographs to be taken, but those that did liked it when they saw the photographs published in the Daily Graphic a few days later.

HUO: You captured the historic moments of independence for Ghana in 1957, but also of the amazing celebrations afterwards.

People came to Ghana from all over the world.

How did you come to cover the independence celebrations for British newspapers?

JB: There was a special picture which allowed me to cover the independence celebrations for the Telegraph, a picture of my son playing with a beer bottle. I showed it at the time to an editor of Drum, and when he went to the UK he wrote to me asking if I could send him the negatives. He then sent them to Black Star, who sold a copy to the Telegraph, who in turn printed it in a weekend edition. When it came around to the celebrations, I was on their books. I was the only photographer they knew in Ghana: “Who do we know? We have James Barnor.” They wrote to me and asked if I’d like to represent them. It came as a shock! I had a friend, Jim Moxton,

Fig. 7 Kwame Nkrumah, just released from prison, after winning Gold Coast legislative election, with Convention People’s Party colleagues, Accra, 1951

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Fig. 8 and following pages Double pages of an album made by James Barnor, featuring among others the CPP MPs portraits taken between 1951 and 1957

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Fig. 8 and following pages Double pages of an album made by James Barnor, featuring among others the CPP MPs portraits taken between 1951 and 1957

264

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who was the government public relations officer and he used to come over to my studio. I showed him the letter and he said “You’re lucky. Write to me officially, and I’ll give you accreditation.” Local photographers had no chance because the world’s press was in Ghana, it was only because I was asked to represent an overseas agency that I was able to attend. I was treated as an overseas representative.

HUO: At that time, magazines played a key role for photography. You began working for Drum magazine while you were in Accra, which brings us to two other people who were important to you, Jim Bailey (fig. 9) and Anthony Smith. Bailey was the main proprietor of Drum, which was based in South Africa, and Smith was the editor of the Ghana edition. It was a very influential magazine and served as an anti-apartheid platform, covering many facets of urban life, politics too of course, and it became one of the most widely read, if not the most widely read, publication in Africa.

Fig. 9 Jim Bailey, Willie Cooke (Drum’s business manager) and James Barnor in front of the magazine’s distribution van and signboard, Tudu, Accra, c. 1955–56

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From what I understand, it was a rather unconventional way of collaborating. You have an anecdote about the night before independence, when Bailey convinced you to go out because you were getting ready to go to bed. Can you tell me about that?

JB: Drum was established in Ghana by Smith, who was employed by Bailey to edit it. Later, Bailey travelled from Johannesburg to see how the magazine was establishing itself in Ghana, and it was Smith who brought Bailey to my studio after I’d given them a few pictures as a freelancer. Bailey would stay at the Sea View Hotel, which was close to my studio. After we were introduced we became close, and he discovered the energy we had in the studio, the community centre, and it grabbed him. So, whenever he was free, he came and sat in the studio to talk with me and meet other people.

During independence I was representing both Drum and Black Star, but I remember that I was busy in the studio and in fact, I was getting ready to close. Bailey walked by my studio and asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was going to bed, but he said “What? You’re Ghanaian, and tonight you’re going to bed? Get your camera, let’s go out.”

It’s how we were together, I could never say no to him.

I picked up my camera and we walked over, talking and chatting along the way. If I didn’t witness the scene before independence and what happened that night, I’d have regretted it. The place was full of people, full of life. A small stage had been set up, but we didn’t know that Nkrumah and his ministers were coming to speak.

We stood right in front of Nkrumah. It was the night he declared, “Now Ghana is free.”

I took photographs, but I was so excited that I gave the film to Bailey to be sent to Drum’s South Africa office, so that they would be printed straight away, and I didn’t get negatives back. I even forgot about sending photographs to Black Star, but I was there, right in front of Nkrumah with my camera and a full roll of film.

Bailey and I spoke all the time. While we were both in Ghana he bought a motorcycle for the Drum office, either for the reporters or the photographers, and it was kept in my studio. Sometimes he would use it himself as it was easy for him to collect from the Sea View Hotel, but we would also ride together. Sometimes I’d ride pillion but sometimes I rode alone. That’s the relationship that we had.

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who was the government public relations officer and he used to come over to my studio. I showed him the letter and he said “You’re lucky. Write to me officially, and I’ll give you accreditation.” Local photographers had no chance because the world’s press was in Ghana, it was only because I was asked to represent an overseas agency that I was able to attend. I was treated as an overseas representative.

HUO: At that time, magazines played a key role for photography. You began working for Drum magazine while you were in Accra, which brings us to two other people who were important to you, Jim Bailey (fig. 9) and Anthony Smith. Bailey was the main proprietor of Drum, which was based in South Africa, and Smith was the editor of the Ghana edition. It was a very influential magazine and served as an anti-apartheid platform, covering many facets of urban life, politics too of course, and it became one of the most widely read, if not the most widely read, publication in Africa.

Fig. 9 Jim Bailey, Willie Cooke (Drum’s business manager) and James Barnor in front of the magazine’s distribution van and signboard, Tudu, Accra, c. 1955–56

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From what I understand, it was a rather unconventional way of collaborating. You have an anecdote about the night before independence, when Bailey convinced you to go out because you were getting ready to go to bed. Can you tell me about that?

JB: Drum was established in Ghana by Smith, who was employed by Bailey to edit it. Later, Bailey travelled from Johannesburg to see how the magazine was establishing itself in Ghana, and it was Smith who brought Bailey to my studio after I’d given them a few pictures as a freelancer. Bailey would stay at the Sea View Hotel, which was close to my studio. After we were introduced we became close, and he discovered the energy we had in the studio, the community centre, and it grabbed him. So, whenever he was free, he came and sat in the studio to talk with me and meet other people.

During independence I was representing both Drum and Black Star, but I remember that I was busy in the studio and in fact, I was getting ready to close. Bailey walked by my studio and asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was going to bed, but he said “What? You’re Ghanaian, and tonight you’re going to bed? Get your camera, let’s go out.”

It’s how we were together, I could never say no to him.

I picked up my camera and we walked over, talking and chatting along the way. If I didn’t witness the scene before independence and what happened that night, I’d have regretted it. The place was full of people, full of life. A small stage had been set up, but we didn’t know that Nkrumah and his ministers were coming to speak.

We stood right in front of Nkrumah. It was the night he declared, “Now Ghana is free.”

I took photographs, but I was so excited that I gave the film to Bailey to be sent to Drum’s South Africa office, so that they would be printed straight away, and I didn’t get negatives back. I even forgot about sending photographs to Black Star, but I was there, right in front of Nkrumah with my camera and a full roll of film.

Bailey and I spoke all the time. While we were both in Ghana he bought a motorcycle for the Drum office, either for the reporters or the photographers, and it was kept in my studio. Sometimes he would use it himself as it was easy for him to collect from the Sea View Hotel, but we would also ride together. Sometimes I’d ride pillion but sometimes I rode alone. That’s the relationship that we had.

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HUO: What about the famous Drum parties?

JB: They were one of the things that attracted young people to Drum. One of the parties was in my studio and another was held on the beach at night. People were swimming under the moonlight.

HUO: In 1959 you left Accra for London, which you’ve said was due in part to your friend and mentor, A. Q. A. Archampong, who left for England shortly before you. What were you most looking forward to?

JB: He was my mentor, and he painted my first backdrop, which I used for many photographs. He used to come to my studio, and when he told me that he was going to London to study, I said, “If you go to London, and the place is all right, let me know,” meaning if I can fit in, let me know. The first letter he wrote to me said “London is the place for you.” At that time, Lord Kitchener’s record was a hit too, “London is the Place for Me.” Amongst other things, he said that the government in Ghana is considering establishing a television station in the UK and that if I could be a part of it, the sky would be my limit.

When I received the letter from Archampong, I took it all in. In my eyes, he was someone who couldn’t be beaten, so I trusted everything he said. He told me to arrange things properly and come over.

HUO: You continued to work for Drum on assignment after you moved to the UK, photographing personalities like Muhammad Ali and Mike Eghan. You sourced and invited models to participate in your shoots, people like Erlin Ibreck, Helen de Coteau and Marie Hallowi (fig. 10). You captured their lives and that of the diaspora in London, working to place these models on the covers of the magazine. That work continues to inspire generations of artists. For example, we spoke to Tyler Mitchell for your birthday celebrations this year. He is the first Black photographer to shoot a cover for Vogue in its 126-year history, and one of the youngest to do so, too. In his birthday dedication to you he said that through your work for Drum, you walked, so that he could run.

JB: If it wasn’t for Drum, no one would have seen my work, I also wouldn’t have ventured into that sort of thing because it was always shot by white or British photographers. Drum was different. Bailey had written me a letter which said he was in Accra and everybody was asking after me. Of course, he knew my friends, my studio

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and he knew the atmosphere. He said that I should contact the Drum office to see if there were any pictures that they needed. The office in Fleet Street was like my home.

Whenever I needed anything, they arranged it for me. It was there that I found my feet and got to know London.

That’s where I started life in the UK, at the Drum office.

At some point I left them, and even though we stayed in touch I didn’t rely on them much. I’d gone to the Medway College of Art in Kent, but something happened for me to go and see them: Bailey had arrived from South Africa.

I had some photographs with me which he looked at and handed them to the editor. He said, “Select some and let James give you captions. Write a feature on him.” If it wasn’t for that avenue of exposing my pictures, I might not have got any work at all. I’d studied photography, but at that time I was deeply involved in colour printing, I was working at the Colour Processing Laboratories (CPL) in Kent, learning how to print in colour. I was earning money and establishing myself in England as a colour printer.

HUO: What else were you doing in Kent?

JB: I had it easy. Around that time, I was spending time with my mentor Dennis Kemp (fig. 11), a lecturer in visual education. He was an employee of the Kodak Lecture Service, he would travel to schools across the country, showing colour slides and talking about his photography.

I even went climbing in North Wales with him, which ordinary Black people didn’t do. I call myself Lucky Jim. I’ve been lucky all my life: I was lucky to learn colour in the leading colour laboratory in Britain during the 1960s, which gave me the experience to get into college. Kemp told me that I must go to school, so I went to the Medway College of Art. When I was interviewed, the head of photography, Norman Tudgay, took me to the principal and said, “Mr. Barnor hasn’t got any GCEs, but I’ll take care of him.” That was a big chance. Without GCEs, you don’t get into further education, but I got in. I never looked back, and I had a soft, sheltered life.

HUO: This leads us to the next person we need to discuss, Kenneth Cobley. You’d mentioned that Kemp had led you to discover an exhibition of colour photography in London, at the Royal Albert Hall, and it was there that you met Cobley of the CPL, which led you to working with them. That’s how you came to colour photography.

JB: While in Ghana I never touched colour, I never knew about it. It wasn’t until I came to London and saw

Fig. 10 Helen de Coteau, cover girl of the Nigerian edition of Drum, December 1967, 35.5 × 27.5 cm

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HUO: What about the famous Drum parties?

JB: They were one of the things that attracted young people to Drum. One of the parties was in my studio and another was held on the beach at night. People were swimming under the moonlight.

HUO: In 1959 you left Accra for London, which you’ve said was due in part to your friend and mentor, A. Q. A. Archampong, who left for England shortly before you. What were you most looking forward to?

JB: He was my mentor, and he painted my first backdrop, which I used for many photographs. He used to come to my studio, and when he told me that he was going to London to study, I said, “If you go to London, and the place is all right, let me know,” meaning if I can fit in, let me know. The first letter he wrote to me said “London is the place for you.” At that time, Lord Kitchener’s record was a hit too, “London is the Place for Me.” Amongst other things, he said that the government in Ghana is considering establishing a television station in the UK and that if I could be a part of it, the sky would be my limit.

When I received the letter from Archampong, I took it all in. In my eyes, he was someone who couldn’t be beaten, so I trusted everything he said. He told me to arrange things properly and come over.

HUO: You continued to work for Drum on assignment after you moved to the UK, photographing personalities like Muhammad Ali and Mike Eghan. You sourced and invited models to participate in your shoots, people like Erlin Ibreck, Helen de Coteau and Marie Hallowi (fig. 10). You captured their lives and that of the diaspora in London, working to place these models on the covers of the magazine. That work continues to inspire generations of artists. For example, we spoke to Tyler Mitchell for your birthday celebrations this year. He is the first Black photographer to shoot a cover for Vogue in its 126-year history, and one of the youngest to do so, too. In his birthday dedication to you he said that through your work for Drum, you walked, so that he could run.

JB: If it wasn’t for Drum, no one would have seen my work, I also wouldn’t have ventured into that sort of thing because it was always shot by white or British photographers. Drum was different. Bailey had written me a letter which said he was in Accra and everybody was asking after me. Of course, he knew my friends, my studio

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and he knew the atmosphere. He said that I should contact the Drum office to see if there were any pictures that they needed. The office in Fleet Street was like my home.

Whenever I needed anything, they arranged it for me. It was there that I found my feet and got to know London.

That’s where I started life in the UK, at the Drum office.

At some point I left them, and even though we stayed in touch I didn’t rely on them much. I’d gone to the Medway College of Art in Kent, but something happened for me to go and see them: Bailey had arrived from South Africa.

I had some photographs with me which he looked at and handed them to the editor. He said, “Select some and let James give you captions. Write a feature on him.” If it wasn’t for that avenue of exposing my pictures, I might not have got any work at all. I’d studied photography, but at that time I was deeply involved in colour printing, I was working at the Colour Processing Laboratories (CPL) in Kent, learning how to print in colour. I was earning money and establishing myself in England as a colour printer.

HUO: What else were you doing in Kent?

JB: I had it easy. Around that time, I was spending time with my mentor Dennis Kemp (fig. 11), a lecturer in visual education. He was an employee of the Kodak Lecture Service, he would travel to schools across the country, showing colour slides and talking about his photography.

I even went climbing in North Wales with him, which ordinary Black people didn’t do. I call myself Lucky Jim. I’ve been lucky all my life: I was lucky to learn colour in the leading colour laboratory in Britain during the 1960s, which gave me the experience to get into college. Kemp told me that I must go to school, so I went to the Medway College of Art. When I was interviewed, the head of photography, Norman Tudgay, took me to the principal and said, “Mr. Barnor hasn’t got any GCEs, but I’ll take care of him.” That was a big chance. Without GCEs, you don’t get into further education, but I got in. I never looked back, and I had a soft, sheltered life.

HUO: This leads us to the next person we need to discuss, Kenneth Cobley. You’d mentioned that Kemp had led you to discover an exhibition of colour photography in London, at the Royal Albert Hall, and it was there that you met Cobley of the CPL, which led you to working with them. That’s how you came to colour photography.

JB: While in Ghana I never touched colour, I never knew about it. It wasn’t until I came to London and saw

Fig. 10 Helen de Coteau, cover girl of the Nigerian edition of Drum, December 1967, 35.5 × 27.5 cm

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At that time, there was a job opportunity with AgfaGevaert in Ghana and I was at the height of my fame and prosperity, if we can call it that. I was at CPL as a printer and I had my camera, so I would cover weddings of friends and other Ghanaians at parties and other occasions, but I thought that with the skills I’d learnt in colour printing, and especially with the opportunity to work for a firm like Agfa-Gevaert, I needed to return to my country.

Fig. 11 Dennis Kemp demonstrating James Barnor’s Linhof camera in the Lake District, United Kingdom, early 1960

an exhibition of photography and this stand with big enlargements of colour photographs. Cobley was there, and when I told him I wanted to learn he asked me where I came from, and I said Ghana. He asked me whether I knew C.Q Thompson. Obviously, I knew him, so I told him he was my friend, to which he said “Oh, then you can come.”

Somehow, at CPL, there was no discrimination of any sort.

There were people from countries of all kinds working together. We were taught together, we ate together, we did everything together. As a colour printer I earnt more money than most photographers. Perhaps that was why I didn’t aspire to do photography as such. The photographers go and find the work, but the colour technician is always in the darkroom, it’s the photographers who bring the work to you. We were printing for the top photographers across the entire country. CPL was described as the leading colour laboratory in the UK, and I was a Black man working there. Not just trying something out, but I had secure employment. There wasn’t any discrimination there, but when I started travelling to take pictures and find models for Drum, things changed. It didn’t change completely, but it became different.

270

HUO: You were very successful in the UK, but you began working for Agfa- Gevaert and brought all your skills and experience to Ghana to establish the first colour processing lab in the country. You also produced an entirely new body of work when you returned. Can you speak about this experience?

JB: That’s history. Today, no one knows about me establishing that colour lab (fig. 12). When I came over to start it, even the Dutch general manager from Agfa-Gevaert didn’t believe I could do it. That’s something that worried me, but I knew it was possible, so I didn’t give it much thought. When I realised he thought we couldn’t do it, I set up a model and some colourful bottles against Agfa flags in the background, so that there was a great deal of colour (cat. 52; fig. 13). All the employees, all the messengers, everyone was watching and could see the range of colour.

So, I took the photographs, I then developed and printed them to show everyone that it can be done in Ghana.

The manager also felt that the people who could afford colour had contacts overseas, so they wouldn’t bring their work to us. After a short time, a shipping firm wanted to advertise. They took a photograph which they wanted to use in their colour Christmas cards, and they brought us the order. But we’d run out of paper. So, I went to him and said, “You said nobody would bring colour here. Now we’re short of paper.” He was embarrassed. He didn’t know what to say.

Colour really changed people’s ideas about photography.

Kente is a Ghanaian woven fabric with many different colours, and people wanted their photographs taken after church, or in town wearing this cloth, so the news spread quickly.

I worked as a technical advisor and thought I’d be working for them for a long time. But after three years, I quit.

When I left that laboratory, I had to eat. I didn’t go back to Ghana with a view to establish a photographic studio, so I had to do something. Somebody told me about the American Embassy. The body of work I made while working there hasn’t come out because the cameras

belonged to them, along with the film and the copyrights, everything (fig. 14).

I did come back to the studio, and I opened Studio X23.

When I recently went to Ghana, I also found some old negatives from a few commercial jobs that I worked on.

HUO: When you left Agfa-Gevaert you met the graphic designer E. .E Lamptey, who commissioned you to create record covers, which are beautiful (p. 216-222; fig. 15).

JB: If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know what I would have done when I left. I wasn’t equipped to do commercial photography, but he brought me lots of work: portraits, newspapers, calendars, advertising and the record sleeves.

HUO: Your archive used to be housed at Rivington Place in Shoreditch, but you felt that your soul had been taken away, so asked for it back.

Where is your archive now?

JB: Some of it is here and some is in Paris with my gallery, Clémentine de la Féronnière, who helped to digitise a lot of the archive. My first publication, Ever Young, was made with Clémentine and Autograph ABP in London.

HUO : Music and the younger generation has played a very important role for you, especially since returning to Ghana. You also managed a band.

Could you tell me more about this?

JB: I’ve always been interested in young people and cultural events. When I was young, through my teacher Odonkor, I joined the school band and became a flautist.

During the colonial days all the schools had bands, and ours was one of the best in the country. When I started teaching, I took the band over and worked with them, helping to polish their performances. When I came

Fig. 13 James Barnor’s arrival in Ghana and the introduction of colour, in the backyard of the Sick Hagemeyer shop, early 1970s

Fig. 12 First business card as manager for Agfa-Gevaert, c. 1969–1970

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At that time, there was a job opportunity with AgfaGevaert in Ghana and I was at the height of my fame and prosperity, if we can call it that. I was at CPL as a printer and I had my camera, so I would cover weddings of friends and other Ghanaians at parties and other occasions, but I thought that with the skills I’d learnt in colour printing, and especially with the opportunity to work for a firm like Agfa-Gevaert, I needed to return to my country.

Fig. 11 Dennis Kemp demonstrating James Barnor’s Linhof camera in the Lake District, United Kingdom, early 1960

an exhibition of photography and this stand with big enlargements of colour photographs. Cobley was there, and when I told him I wanted to learn he asked me where I came from, and I said Ghana. He asked me whether I knew C.Q Thompson. Obviously, I knew him, so I told him he was my friend, to which he said “Oh, then you can come.”

Somehow, at CPL, there was no discrimination of any sort.

There were people from countries of all kinds working together. We were taught together, we ate together, we did everything together. As a colour printer I earnt more money than most photographers. Perhaps that was why I didn’t aspire to do photography as such. The photographers go and find the work, but the colour technician is always in the darkroom, it’s the photographers who bring the work to you. We were printing for the top photographers across the entire country. CPL was described as the leading colour laboratory in the UK, and I was a Black man working there. Not just trying something out, but I had secure employment. There wasn’t any discrimination there, but when I started travelling to take pictures and find models for Drum, things changed. It didn’t change completely, but it became different.

270

HUO: You were very successful in the UK, but you began working for Agfa- Gevaert and brought all your skills and experience to Ghana to establish the first colour processing lab in the country. You also produced an entirely new body of work when you returned. Can you speak about this experience?

JB: That’s history. Today, no one knows about me establishing that colour lab (fig. 12). When I came over to start it, even the Dutch general manager from Agfa-Gevaert didn’t believe I could do it. That’s something that worried me, but I knew it was possible, so I didn’t give it much thought. When I realised he thought we couldn’t do it, I set up a model and some colourful bottles against Agfa flags in the background, so that there was a great deal of colour (cat. 52; fig. 13). All the employees, all the messengers, everyone was watching and could see the range of colour.

So, I took the photographs, I then developed and printed them to show everyone that it can be done in Ghana.

The manager also felt that the people who could afford colour had contacts overseas, so they wouldn’t bring their work to us. After a short time, a shipping firm wanted to advertise. They took a photograph which they wanted to use in their colour Christmas cards, and they brought us the order. But we’d run out of paper. So, I went to him and said, “You said nobody would bring colour here. Now we’re short of paper.” He was embarrassed. He didn’t know what to say.

Colour really changed people’s ideas about photography.

Kente is a Ghanaian woven fabric with many different colours, and people wanted their photographs taken after church, or in town wearing this cloth, so the news spread quickly.

I worked as a technical advisor and thought I’d be working for them for a long time. But after three years, I quit.

When I left that laboratory, I had to eat. I didn’t go back to Ghana with a view to establish a photographic studio, so I had to do something. Somebody told me about the American Embassy. The body of work I made while working there hasn’t come out because the cameras

belonged to them, along with the film and the copyrights, everything (fig. 14).

I did come back to the studio, and I opened Studio X23.

When I recently went to Ghana, I also found some old negatives from a few commercial jobs that I worked on.

HUO: When you left Agfa-Gevaert you met the graphic designer E. .E Lamptey, who commissioned you to create record covers, which are beautiful (p. 216-222; fig. 15).

JB: If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know what I would have done when I left. I wasn’t equipped to do commercial photography, but he brought me lots of work: portraits, newspapers, calendars, advertising and the record sleeves.

HUO: Your archive used to be housed at Rivington Place in Shoreditch, but you felt that your soul had been taken away, so asked for it back.

Where is your archive now?

JB: Some of it is here and some is in Paris with my gallery, Clémentine de la Féronnière, who helped to digitise a lot of the archive. My first publication, Ever Young, was made with Clémentine and Autograph ABP in London.

HUO : Music and the younger generation has played a very important role for you, especially since returning to Ghana. You also managed a band.

Could you tell me more about this?

JB: I’ve always been interested in young people and cultural events. When I was young, through my teacher Odonkor, I joined the school band and became a flautist.

During the colonial days all the schools had bands, and ours was one of the best in the country. When I started teaching, I took the band over and worked with them, helping to polish their performances. When I came

Fig. 13 James Barnor’s arrival in Ghana and the introduction of colour, in the backyard of the Sick Hagemeyer shop, early 1970s

Fig. 12 First business card as manager for Agfa-Gevaert, c. 1969–1970

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back to Ghana from the UK in the 1970s, I met a group of schoolchildren who were struggling, and I virtually adopted them. The band became my secondary interest, just behind photography. My studio had a big yard outside and I had a room where we kept all our drums.

Nobody was there in the evening, so we would practice. I didn’t play myself and I didn’t write music. I directed and managed them and helped to open doors for them. In 1983, we were even invited to Italy for nearly two months.

Today, those schoolchildren are all over the diaspora.

There are some in America, the UK, Belgium, and one from Germany even managed to bring a group to Paris for my 90th birthday. They’ve since joined other groups, and I’m still in touch with them. Even though I could play the flute, I didn’t play or write music, I managed and directed them in order to open doors for them. The memory of these times will never leave me.

HUO: You often quote a proverb, “A civilisation

Fig. 14 Cover of Amannee, the magazine of the American Embassy, 1979, 26.5 × 20 cm

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flourishes when people plant trees under which they will never sit.” This proverb reminds me of Roman Krznaric’s book The Good Ancestor (2020), in which he discusses the ‘short term world’ in which we are living in order to question how we might liberate ourselves from the tyranny of short-termism and act in a way that considers future generations to come.

Teaching and supporting others has been an important part of your career. What does this proverb mean to you?

JB: I saw it in a magazine referring to plants, but I took it to mean the lives of people. When you plant something, you sew a seed in the life of a young person and you don’t do it hoping for a reward or a payback. It takes a long time for a timbre tree to grow, for example. Let’s say 100 years. The people who plant it never reap its rewards themselves. It means that the cultural group can now enjoy what I had sewn into their lives as children, a long time ago. They’re reaping the rewards. They will teach others and it will carry on.

I’ve seen one or two people in Ghana who are organising things. Nii Obodai is doing well, especially at organising photographers, because it’s not easy to do. When I grew up, Ghanaian photographers always kept to themselves.

Nobody wanted to share any ideas and they didn’t cooperate, but Obodai is trying hard and forming photographic groups and workshops which is very good.

One thing that might be controversial is that I would always suggest education, education, education, before jumping into photography. Even if you want to become an apprentice, first go to secondary school and progress as far as you can. If you have a good education, it’s easier for you to understand the assignment at hand. Even before you pick up your camera, you’ll know what you’re going to do with the photograph.

I’m speaking from experience, especially when I went to the Medway College of Art. I had to sit in the same class with young students who had studied science, chemistry and other subjects. It was frustrating for me. With computers and the Internet now, people can learn anything, so it’s best to get your basic education to the highest level you can, then let the camera work for you.

Fig. 15 Record sleeve of the Youngsters Band’s album, 1975, 31 × 31 cm

HUO: While we’re speaking of education, I wanted to talk about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He wrote a wonderful little book of advice to a young poet.

You’ve spoken about an amazing new generation of

273

back to Ghana from the UK in the 1970s, I met a group of schoolchildren who were struggling, and I virtually adopted them. The band became my secondary interest, just behind photography. My studio had a big yard outside and I had a room where we kept all our drums.

Nobody was there in the evening, so we would practice. I didn’t play myself and I didn’t write music. I directed and managed them and helped to open doors for them. In 1983, we were even invited to Italy for nearly two months.

Today, those schoolchildren are all over the diaspora.

There are some in America, the UK, Belgium, and one from Germany even managed to bring a group to Paris for my 90th birthday. They’ve since joined other groups, and I’m still in touch with them. Even though I could play the flute, I didn’t play or write music, I managed and directed them in order to open doors for them. The memory of these times will never leave me.

HUO: You often quote a proverb, “A civilisation

Fig. 14 Cover of Amannee, the magazine of the American Embassy, 1979, 26.5 × 20 cm

272

flourishes when people plant trees under which they will never sit.” This proverb reminds me of Roman Krznaric’s book The Good Ancestor (2020), in which he discusses the ‘short term world’ in which we are living in order to question how we might liberate ourselves from the tyranny of short-termism and act in a way that considers future generations to come.

Teaching and supporting others has been an important part of your career. What does this proverb mean to you?

JB: I saw it in a magazine referring to plants, but I took it to mean the lives of people. When you plant something, you sew a seed in the life of a young person and you don’t do it hoping for a reward or a payback. It takes a long time for a timbre tree to grow, for example. Let’s say 100 years. The people who plant it never reap its rewards themselves. It means that the cultural group can now enjoy what I had sewn into their lives as children, a long time ago. They’re reaping the rewards. They will teach others and it will carry on.

I’ve seen one or two people in Ghana who are organising things. Nii Obodai is doing well, especially at organising photographers, because it’s not easy to do. When I grew up, Ghanaian photographers always kept to themselves.

Nobody wanted to share any ideas and they didn’t cooperate, but Obodai is trying hard and forming photographic groups and workshops which is very good.

One thing that might be controversial is that I would always suggest education, education, education, before jumping into photography. Even if you want to become an apprentice, first go to secondary school and progress as far as you can. If you have a good education, it’s easier for you to understand the assignment at hand. Even before you pick up your camera, you’ll know what you’re going to do with the photograph.

I’m speaking from experience, especially when I went to the Medway College of Art. I had to sit in the same class with young students who had studied science, chemistry and other subjects. It was frustrating for me. With computers and the Internet now, people can learn anything, so it’s best to get your basic education to the highest level you can, then let the camera work for you.

Fig. 15 Record sleeve of the Youngsters Band’s album, 1975, 31 × 31 cm

HUO: While we’re speaking of education, I wanted to talk about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He wrote a wonderful little book of advice to a young poet.

You’ve spoken about an amazing new generation of

273

photographers in Ghana, so what would your advice be to young photographers today, all over the world?

JB: First of all, cooperation. Every year La Gacilly in France has a photography festival and I once had a large exhibition outside. It seems as if they worship photography like a carnival, and as soon as they finish, they start planning for the next year. I’d like to help my fellow photographers do the same. Ghanaians don’t have photographic exhibitions, and I wish they could unite and start exhibiting their work amongst themselves, so that young people would know the importance of photography.

My advice is to get together, create exhibitions and criticise each other’s work. Have a meeting place where you get together once a month, where everyone should bring along ten images. Perhaps you call an artist, not necessarily a photographer, to tell you what they think about your work. After spending two hours going through all the photographs from the group and discussing them, you’ll know what makes a good picture. The winners can be exhibited at the end of the year, and there will be outstanding pictures which can be used for an exhibition.

HUO: Henri Cartier-Bresson once said that a photographer is like a hunter who is a vegetarian.

What would be your definition of photography?

JB: For me, photography has been my life, so I don’t know what definition I’d give it. Everyone I’m close with has been involved with photography in some way, whether they knew something about it or helped me with it. There are so many books too, and I haven’t got the discipline to read and learn from them, but I can’t throw them away either. I dream of photography. If I could leave a legacy it would be to help people to pursue photography through education.

HUO: That’s such a beautiful conclusion, James.

Thank you.

Fig. 16 Never Sleep boat in the port of Accra, mid 1970s Interview edited by Laura Algar, Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Joseph Constable. First published in James Barnor: Accra/London– A Retrospective by Koenig Books, London and Serpentine, London on the occasion of the exhibition at Serpentine, London (19 May–25 October 2021), Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano (13 March–31 July 2022) and Detroit Institute of Arts (28 May–1 October 2023), curated by Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Chief Curator, Serpentine and Awa Konaté: Culture Art Society (CAS), Assistant Curator.

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275

photographers in Ghana, so what would your advice be to young photographers today, all over the world?

JB: First of all, cooperation. Every year La Gacilly in France has a photography festival and I once had a large exhibition outside. It seems as if they worship photography like a carnival, and as soon as they finish, they start planning for the next year. I’d like to help my fellow photographers do the same. Ghanaians don’t have photographic exhibitions, and I wish they could unite and start exhibiting their work amongst themselves, so that young people would know the importance of photography.

My advice is to get together, create exhibitions and criticise each other’s work. Have a meeting place where you get together once a month, where everyone should bring along ten images. Perhaps you call an artist, not necessarily a photographer, to tell you what they think about your work. After spending two hours going through all the photographs from the group and discussing them, you’ll know what makes a good picture. The winners can be exhibited at the end of the year, and there will be outstanding pictures which can be used for an exhibition.

HUO: Henri Cartier-Bresson once said that a photographer is like a hunter who is a vegetarian.

What would be your definition of photography?

JB: For me, photography has been my life, so I don’t know what definition I’d give it. Everyone I’m close with has been involved with photography in some way, whether they knew something about it or helped me with it. There are so many books too, and I haven’t got the discipline to read and learn from them, but I can’t throw them away either. I dream of photography. If I could leave a legacy it would be to help people to pursue photography through education.

HUO: That’s such a beautiful conclusion, James.

Thank you.

Fig. 16 Never Sleep boat in the port of Accra, mid 1970s Interview edited by Laura Algar, Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Joseph Constable. First published in James Barnor: Accra/London– A Retrospective by Koenig Books, London and Serpentine, London on the occasion of the exhibition at Serpentine, London (19 May–25 October 2021), Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano (13 March–31 July 2022) and Detroit Institute of Arts (28 May–1 October 2023), curated by Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Chief Curator, Serpentine and Awa Konaté: Culture Art Society (CAS), Assistant Curator.

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S H A PIN G NE W STO RIES ISABELLA SENIUTA

1. “James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective”, 19 May–24 October 2021.

2. Telephone conversation between Liz Johnson Artur and the author, 9 March 2022.

In 2021, James Barnor was honoured with his first large-scale retrospective at the age of 92. The exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery in London1 was part of a larger effort to focus attention on artists who had yet to be featured in solo museum and gallery shows, like the Venezuelan painter Luchita Hurtado, who was spotlighted in 2019. Two months before the opening of the Barnor retrospective, the gallery hosted, with the curator Bianca Manu, an online event called Portraits for the Future: A Celebration of James Barnor, examining the Ghanaian photographer’s “underground” legacy in present-day artistic production. Bringing together guests from a wide range of backgrounds, including the photographers Liz Johnson Artur and Tyler Mitchell, the architect Sir David Adjaye and Edward Enninful, editor-in-chief of the British edition of Vogue magazine, the event raised a number of questions. For example, how did James Barnor’s work inspire subsequent generations? How can the influence of his immense photographic oeuvre be assessed in the context of contemporary visual history? Because Barnor spanned continents, embracing a variety of genres and practices, the importance of his work far exceeds the framework of his career, marked by his journeys between Ghana and the United Kingdom. Today, Barnor has become a visual reference associated with photographers from the African diaspora and a new supporting voice for young talents who are challenging the norms in the representation of Black identities.

Twelve years ago, Liz Johnson Artur became one of the first photographers to take an interest in James Barnor’s work. She later took a portrait of Barnor, and filmed his apartment and her conversations with him. Born in Bulgaria in 1964, this RussianGhanaian artist has devoted herself since the 1990s to documenting the daily lives of the African diaspora, combining her entire body of work in a project entitled Black Balloon Archive. She first discovered Barnor’s photographs in 2010 at an exhibition at Autograph ABP in London: “The first time I looked at his images, I was struck by the connection he establishes with the persons he photographs. And that is also very important in my work. It was very encouraging to see how involved he was with photography in his time and how he managed to keep his archive alive.”2 While Johnson Artur’s output is more in the vein of social documentary, a different genre from Barnor’s studio or photojournalism work, her images often reflect a shared point of interest: the representation of groups during festivals and religious celebrations (fig. 3).

Eight years later, photographs by both Johnson Artur and Barnor were shown at the David Nolan Gallery in New York as part of The Synthetic Moment, an exhibition that also featured Kwame Brathwaite, Zoe Leonard, Christopher Williams and the American artist and professor David Hartt. Curated by Hartt, the group show created an intergenerational dialogue among works produced in Accra, London and

277

S H A PIN G NE W STO RIES ISABELLA SENIUTA

1. “James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective”, 19 May–24 October 2021.

2. Telephone conversation between Liz Johnson Artur and the author, 9 March 2022.

In 2021, James Barnor was honoured with his first large-scale retrospective at the age of 92. The exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery in London1 was part of a larger effort to focus attention on artists who had yet to be featured in solo museum and gallery shows, like the Venezuelan painter Luchita Hurtado, who was spotlighted in 2019. Two months before the opening of the Barnor retrospective, the gallery hosted, with the curator Bianca Manu, an online event called Portraits for the Future: A Celebration of James Barnor, examining the Ghanaian photographer’s “underground” legacy in present-day artistic production. Bringing together guests from a wide range of backgrounds, including the photographers Liz Johnson Artur and Tyler Mitchell, the architect Sir David Adjaye and Edward Enninful, editor-in-chief of the British edition of Vogue magazine, the event raised a number of questions. For example, how did James Barnor’s work inspire subsequent generations? How can the influence of his immense photographic oeuvre be assessed in the context of contemporary visual history? Because Barnor spanned continents, embracing a variety of genres and practices, the importance of his work far exceeds the framework of his career, marked by his journeys between Ghana and the United Kingdom. Today, Barnor has become a visual reference associated with photographers from the African diaspora and a new supporting voice for young talents who are challenging the norms in the representation of Black identities.

Twelve years ago, Liz Johnson Artur became one of the first photographers to take an interest in James Barnor’s work. She later took a portrait of Barnor, and filmed his apartment and her conversations with him. Born in Bulgaria in 1964, this RussianGhanaian artist has devoted herself since the 1990s to documenting the daily lives of the African diaspora, combining her entire body of work in a project entitled Black Balloon Archive. She first discovered Barnor’s photographs in 2010 at an exhibition at Autograph ABP in London: “The first time I looked at his images, I was struck by the connection he establishes with the persons he photographs. And that is also very important in my work. It was very encouraging to see how involved he was with photography in his time and how he managed to keep his archive alive.”2 While Johnson Artur’s output is more in the vein of social documentary, a different genre from Barnor’s studio or photojournalism work, her images often reflect a shared point of interest: the representation of groups during festivals and religious celebrations (fig. 3).

Eight years later, photographs by both Johnson Artur and Barnor were shown at the David Nolan Gallery in New York as part of The Synthetic Moment, an exhibition that also featured Kwame Brathwaite, Zoe Leonard, Christopher Williams and the American artist and professor David Hartt. Curated by Hartt, the group show created an intergenerational dialogue among works produced in Accra, London and

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Fig. 1 Tyler Mitchell (b. 1995, USA), Untitled (Jaycina and Syx), 2021

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Fig. 2 James Barnor, Everything In My Hand I Bring, Ever Young Studio, Accra, c. 1953

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Fig. 1 Tyler Mitchell (b. 1995, USA), Untitled (Jaycina and Syx), 2021

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Fig. 2 James Barnor, Everything In My Hand I Bring, Ever Young Studio, Accra, c. 1953

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Fig. 3 Liz Johnson Artur (b. 1964, Bulgaria), Black Balloon Archives

3. Email interview between David Hartt and the author, 5 March 2022.

4. On this topic, see “People Get Ready: James Barnor’s Route Map of Afro-Modernity” by Kobena Mercer, professor of art history and African-American studies at Yale University, in James Barnor. Ever Young, London, Autograph ABP, Paris, Éditions Clémentine de la Féronnière, 2015, pp. 169–171.

5. Antwaun Sargent (ed.), The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion (exh. cat., New York, Aperture Gallery, 24 October 2019– 18 January 2020), New York, Aperture, 2019.

6. Telephone conversation between Tyler Mitchell and the author, 3 March 2022.

7. Concerning transmission, see the contribution of Christine Barthe, “Move with a Camera”, in Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Joseph Constable (eds.), James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective (exh. cat., London, Serpentine North Gallery, 19 May–24 October 2021), Cologne, Walther König, London, Serpentine Galleries, 2021, pp. 28–39.

Los Angeles, addressing themes like celebration and solitude, community and desire.

Commenting on the project, Hartt recounts, “I was particularly drawn to images made upon James Barnor’s return to Ghana, specifically the images of models posing with Agfa photo chemicals. They’re optimistic images that demonstrate the recently independent country’s assertion of modernity.”3 From that time on, a gradual change took place in the way the Ghanaian master’s career was presented. He first attracted public interest as a visual chronicler of the changes that took place in Ghana during its bid for independence. In a second phase he was better known for his collaboration, in the London of the 1960s, with the Pan-African magazine Drum, an emblem of the anti-apartheid movement. It was only later that the attention shifted to his studio portraiture, which nonetheless constitutes his original core practice.

Even though Barnor had previously been associated with his West African counterparts, in particular the Nigerian photographer J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere, his images are now more closely linked to those of photographers active on the North American continent. The most prominent of them is Kwame Brathwaite, who had been an active participant in the empowerment of the subjects he photographed, and who helped popularise, starting in the late 1950s, the political slogan “Black is beautiful”.

In the 2010s Barnor’s photographs were more widely shared online by Autograph ABP, which included his work in its programme on the politics of the image. In 2015 the London institution published, in collaboration with Éditions Clémentine de la Féronnière, the first monograph devoted to Barnor, anchoring his practice in the concept of Afro-modernity.4 The dissemination of his photographs by Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, which maintains a complete inventory of his negatives, along with group shows at high-profile institutions like Tate Britain in London, triggered a snowball effect.

As a result, the young photographers united under the banner of the “New Black Vanguard”5 began to discover Barnor’s images in the course of their research on the studio portrait tradition in West Africa. One of them is the American photographer Tyler Mitchell (fig. 1). Born in Atlanta, he is best known for his portrait, produced in 2018 when he was 23 years old, of the American singer Beyoncé (fig. 2), the first work by a Black photographer to grace the cover of American Vogue. In a recent interview, he acknowledged the influence of Barnor: “I was first introduced to James’ work around the end of my time at school at New York University. My teacher Deborah Willis gave me the Ever Young book. It was a discovery of an amazing African photographer that I thought was photographing in a very contemporary way, in an optimistic way.”6 For Mitchell, Barnor’s images highlight the idea of togetherness among Black people on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as a perceptible dignity and joie de vivre in the models’ choices of clothing and hairstyles, as in the famous colour portrait of the Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant posing with brightly coloured canisters. Mitchell has talked with Barnor on several occasions over the past two years, discussing the chromatic treatment of his images and questions of beauty, race and power. While intergenerational influences are common in the history of 20th-century art and photography, Barnor evinces a staunch dedication to the idea of transmission: he invites photographers to his home, talks to them about his prints, and has long telephone discussions with an international community of Black photographers.7 These interactions have given rise to a dual momentum: the promotion of his images among a younger generation that is developing a new aesthetic vocabulary, and his establishment as a mentor in visual history.

280

Fig. 4 Stephen Tayo, The Model Eze Meju Portrayed in the Neighbourhood Ebute Metta for The Last Magazine, Lagos, 2019

8. Bianca A. Manu, “James Barnor Through the Lens of the New Generation”, Serpentine Galleries, 8 July 2021, URL: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/ james-barnor-through-the-lens-of-the-new-generation.

9. A. Sargent, op. cit.

10. B. A. Manu, op. cit.

Like Mitchell, the photographer Stephen Tayo (born in Nigeria in 1994) sees himself as an heir to Barnor’s work. He explains, “James Barnor is a huge part of my practice as a photographer; his influence as an inspiration is very much ongoing.

When I think about Barnor’s early photography, it was more about representation and what was available. Most of us [photographers] still reference his work.”8 Both Mitchell and Tayo make reference in their work to Barnor’s world, and more generally to the African studio tradition of the late 20th century: the background of a Victorian interior painted on a sheet in the series of Beyoncé portraits for the former, and for the latter outdoor portraits taken in backyards with natural light, double portraits of models wearing the same outfits, and the interplay of chromatic parallels between the models’ clothes and the background (fig. 4).

Both are featured in Antwaun Sargent’s book The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion,9 which examines the work of a new generation of photographers – women and men born in the 1990s, many of whom come from South Africa, the United States, Nigeria, the United Kingdom or Ghana. At the crossroads of art, fashion and questions of queerness, these young creators are constantly inventing different paths to emancipation through the photographic medium. For this “New Black Vanguard”, Barnor’s photographs are not only a formal reference point in the art of the portrait, but also a springboard for political action.

Starting in 2019, this political reading of James Barnor’s career gained ground, and his work was rediscovered in resonance with the Black Lives Matter political movement. In the autumn of 2020, the young photographer Campbell Addy (b. 1993, UK), in response to a request by i-D magazine, paid homage to Barnor in the form of a diptych: on one side is an image by Barnor, a low-angle shot showing a woman’s back bearing the inscription “NLM”, three letters evoking the National Liberation Movement (cat. 26), the opposition to the party of the Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah. On the other side, echoing Barnor’s image, Addy photographed a man’s back with the three letters “BLM”, for “Black Lives Matter”, standing in for the initials of the African party. Through an effect of juxtaposition, the diptych suggests a frontal parallel between the early struggles for African independence and the protests calling for racial justice in the United States that reached a peak in June 2020 following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade at the hands of American law enforcement. Denouncing discrimination and police brutality, this antiracist movement received unprecedented media attention and led to the formation of See in Black, a collective uniting six Black photographers of the same generation as Addy. One of its members, Mahaneela (b. 1993, UK), expressed her admiration for the work of James Barnor: “The time we’re in now really feels like another African renaissance,” she says. “Barnor showed us [images of] young Ghanaians moving to the UK and learning how to adjust and shape a new culture of what it is to be a British Ghanaian and what it is to be British and still fiercely African. I feel like we are seeing another renaissance of that kind, with the world looking to Africa. Africa is leading as far as culture and music go, so it feels like we’ve come full circle. His work is still as relevant and striking as it was then.”10 Nearly 70 years after Ghana achieved independence, Barnor’s photographs are taking on new meaning on the other side of the Atlantic.

His work is being rediscovered, harking back to the Harlem Renaissance (1918–30), a civic movement that promoted African-American culture in the period between the two world wars. The political appropriation of James Barnor’s heritage initiates a new conversation about the context of the creation and reception of his images, enshrining him in the history of iconic Black artists whose uniqueness is sometimes disregarded.

281

Fig. 3 Liz Johnson Artur (b. 1964, Bulgaria), Black Balloon Archives

3. Email interview between David Hartt and the author, 5 March 2022.

4. On this topic, see “People Get Ready: James Barnor’s Route Map of Afro-Modernity” by Kobena Mercer, professor of art history and African-American studies at Yale University, in James Barnor. Ever Young, London, Autograph ABP, Paris, Éditions Clémentine de la Féronnière, 2015, pp. 169–171.

5. Antwaun Sargent (ed.), The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion (exh. cat., New York, Aperture Gallery, 24 October 2019– 18 January 2020), New York, Aperture, 2019.

6. Telephone conversation between Tyler Mitchell and the author, 3 March 2022.

7. Concerning transmission, see the contribution of Christine Barthe, “Move with a Camera”, in Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Joseph Constable (eds.), James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective (exh. cat., London, Serpentine North Gallery, 19 May–24 October 2021), Cologne, Walther König, London, Serpentine Galleries, 2021, pp. 28–39.

Los Angeles, addressing themes like celebration and solitude, community and desire.

Commenting on the project, Hartt recounts, “I was particularly drawn to images made upon James Barnor’s return to Ghana, specifically the images of models posing with Agfa photo chemicals. They’re optimistic images that demonstrate the recently independent country’s assertion of modernity.”3 From that time on, a gradual change took place in the way the Ghanaian master’s career was presented. He first attracted public interest as a visual chronicler of the changes that took place in Ghana during its bid for independence. In a second phase he was better known for his collaboration, in the London of the 1960s, with the Pan-African magazine Drum, an emblem of the anti-apartheid movement. It was only later that the attention shifted to his studio portraiture, which nonetheless constitutes his original core practice.

Even though Barnor had previously been associated with his West African counterparts, in particular the Nigerian photographer J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere, his images are now more closely linked to those of photographers active on the North American continent. The most prominent of them is Kwame Brathwaite, who had been an active participant in the empowerment of the subjects he photographed, and who helped popularise, starting in the late 1950s, the political slogan “Black is beautiful”.

In the 2010s Barnor’s photographs were more widely shared online by Autograph ABP, which included his work in its programme on the politics of the image. In 2015 the London institution published, in collaboration with Éditions Clémentine de la Féronnière, the first monograph devoted to Barnor, anchoring his practice in the concept of Afro-modernity.4 The dissemination of his photographs by Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, which maintains a complete inventory of his negatives, along with group shows at high-profile institutions like Tate Britain in London, triggered a snowball effect.

As a result, the young photographers united under the banner of the “New Black Vanguard”5 began to discover Barnor’s images in the course of their research on the studio portrait tradition in West Africa. One of them is the American photographer Tyler Mitchell (fig. 1). Born in Atlanta, he is best known for his portrait, produced in 2018 when he was 23 years old, of the American singer Beyoncé (fig. 2), the first work by a Black photographer to grace the cover of American Vogue. In a recent interview, he acknowledged the influence of Barnor: “I was first introduced to James’ work around the end of my time at school at New York University. My teacher Deborah Willis gave me the Ever Young book. It was a discovery of an amazing African photographer that I thought was photographing in a very contemporary way, in an optimistic way.”6 For Mitchell, Barnor’s images highlight the idea of togetherness among Black people on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as a perceptible dignity and joie de vivre in the models’ choices of clothing and hairstyles, as in the famous colour portrait of the Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant posing with brightly coloured canisters. Mitchell has talked with Barnor on several occasions over the past two years, discussing the chromatic treatment of his images and questions of beauty, race and power. While intergenerational influences are common in the history of 20th-century art and photography, Barnor evinces a staunch dedication to the idea of transmission: he invites photographers to his home, talks to them about his prints, and has long telephone discussions with an international community of Black photographers.7 These interactions have given rise to a dual momentum: the promotion of his images among a younger generation that is developing a new aesthetic vocabulary, and his establishment as a mentor in visual history.

280

Fig. 4 Stephen Tayo, The Model Eze Meju Portrayed in the Neighbourhood Ebute Metta for The Last Magazine, Lagos, 2019

8. Bianca A. Manu, “James Barnor Through the Lens of the New Generation”, Serpentine Galleries, 8 July 2021, URL: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/ james-barnor-through-the-lens-of-the-new-generation.

9. A. Sargent, op. cit.

10. B. A. Manu, op. cit.

Like Mitchell, the photographer Stephen Tayo (born in Nigeria in 1994) sees himself as an heir to Barnor’s work. He explains, “James Barnor is a huge part of my practice as a photographer; his influence as an inspiration is very much ongoing.

When I think about Barnor’s early photography, it was more about representation and what was available. Most of us [photographers] still reference his work.”8 Both Mitchell and Tayo make reference in their work to Barnor’s world, and more generally to the African studio tradition of the late 20th century: the background of a Victorian interior painted on a sheet in the series of Beyoncé portraits for the former, and for the latter outdoor portraits taken in backyards with natural light, double portraits of models wearing the same outfits, and the interplay of chromatic parallels between the models’ clothes and the background (fig. 4).

Both are featured in Antwaun Sargent’s book The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion,9 which examines the work of a new generation of photographers – women and men born in the 1990s, many of whom come from South Africa, the United States, Nigeria, the United Kingdom or Ghana. At the crossroads of art, fashion and questions of queerness, these young creators are constantly inventing different paths to emancipation through the photographic medium. For this “New Black Vanguard”, Barnor’s photographs are not only a formal reference point in the art of the portrait, but also a springboard for political action.

Starting in 2019, this political reading of James Barnor’s career gained ground, and his work was rediscovered in resonance with the Black Lives Matter political movement. In the autumn of 2020, the young photographer Campbell Addy (b. 1993, UK), in response to a request by i-D magazine, paid homage to Barnor in the form of a diptych: on one side is an image by Barnor, a low-angle shot showing a woman’s back bearing the inscription “NLM”, three letters evoking the National Liberation Movement (cat. 26), the opposition to the party of the Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah. On the other side, echoing Barnor’s image, Addy photographed a man’s back with the three letters “BLM”, for “Black Lives Matter”, standing in for the initials of the African party. Through an effect of juxtaposition, the diptych suggests a frontal parallel between the early struggles for African independence and the protests calling for racial justice in the United States that reached a peak in June 2020 following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade at the hands of American law enforcement. Denouncing discrimination and police brutality, this antiracist movement received unprecedented media attention and led to the formation of See in Black, a collective uniting six Black photographers of the same generation as Addy. One of its members, Mahaneela (b. 1993, UK), expressed her admiration for the work of James Barnor: “The time we’re in now really feels like another African renaissance,” she says. “Barnor showed us [images of] young Ghanaians moving to the UK and learning how to adjust and shape a new culture of what it is to be a British Ghanaian and what it is to be British and still fiercely African. I feel like we are seeing another renaissance of that kind, with the world looking to Africa. Africa is leading as far as culture and music go, so it feels like we’ve come full circle. His work is still as relevant and striking as it was then.”10 Nearly 70 years after Ghana achieved independence, Barnor’s photographs are taking on new meaning on the other side of the Atlantic.

His work is being rediscovered, harking back to the Harlem Renaissance (1918–30), a civic movement that promoted African-American culture in the period between the two world wars. The political appropriation of James Barnor’s heritage initiates a new conversation about the context of the creation and reception of his images, enshrining him in the history of iconic Black artists whose uniqueness is sometimes disregarded.

281

Fig. 5 Silvia Rosi (b. 1992, Italy), Self Portrait As My Mother, 2019

282

Fig. 6 James Barnor, Naa Jacobson as Ballroom Queen after a fashion show, Ever Young Studio, c. 1955

283

Fig. 5 Silvia Rosi (b. 1992, Italy), Self Portrait As My Mother, 2019

282

Fig. 6 James Barnor, Naa Jacobson as Ballroom Queen after a fashion show, Ever Young Studio, c. 1955

283

Fig. 7 Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990, South Africa), Ka 2-phisi yaka e pinky II, 2013

11. Interview of Lebohang Kganye with Awa Konaté in “James Barnor. Past, Present and Future”, Nataal, 21 April 2021, https://nataal.com/james-barnor-2.

12. Ibid.

13. Telephone conversation between Jessica Sarkodie and the author, 3 March 2022.

14. Telephone conversation between Delali Cofie and the author, 16 February 2022.

In parallel with this North American renown, Barnor’s legacy also comes through, more indirectly, in the visual activism of young photographers like Lebohang Kganye in South Africa (fig. 7) and Silvia Rosi in Italy (fig. 5). In her Ke Lefa Laka series, Kganye juxtaposes old photographs of her mother, retrieved from the family archives, with self-portraits in which she appears assuming the same poses as her mother and dressed in similar clothes to create a new story. Although her artistic practice is technically quite different from Barnor’s, Kganye said in an interview, “Working on Ke Lefa Laka a few years ago, while looking at photographers that worked with Drum magazine, I was intrigued by the sense of playfulness and a suggested performance of ideal selves in James Barnor’s portraits of Black fashionable women.”11 Along similar lines, Silvia Rosi subtly re-examines questions concerning the relationship between memory, clothing and the representation of Black women. On this topic, she says, “James Barnor has always been a great influencer for his ability as an artist to be present and to record history. As an Italian photographer of Togolese descent, I find myself researching my own identity between two continents. In the context of this research, Barnor’s work, as well as my family’s photo albums, act as a compass, for the way in which they guide me through a documentation of the Black experience at times of strong historical transition.”12 Rosi’s compelling mises en scène, against painted backgrounds inspired by African studios, are reminiscent of certain images from the Ever Young studio, including a self-portrait of Barnor with one of his models (cat. 5). The photographer is shown in semi-close-up alongside his friend Béatrice, their elbows resting on a seatback and their eyes conveying a certain melancholy. For both Barnor and Rosi, the studio is above all a place where the subjects can reinvent their identities (fig. 6).

From London to New York, the body of commentary on James Barnor’s legacy shows that his work has found its place in transatlantic visual history since its (re) discovery in the early 21st century. The visual references to his imagery differ, but the same terms are used repeatedly to describe the photographer himself: joie de vivre, an energetic personality, a sharp sense of humour, a great storyteller.

But what of Barnor’s legacy in West Africa? According to Jessica Sarkodie, who is based in Dakar, the photographer’s images offer a nostalgic vision of her forebears’ era, but at the same time constitute an iconographic source for the rest of the world: “His images are highlighting a beauty and an elegance that I’ve always known about, that I’ve been told about from people in my family who were older and that I’ve seen in other pictures not necessarily taken by professionals. And so, for me, James Barnor’s work has not really changed any representation of Blackness. But he brought this representation to the Western world.”13 The young Delali Cofie discovered Barnor when he was researching visual references in the ceremonies of Ghanaian society: “When I was young, I used to watch a movie with my family called Love Brewed in the African Pot (1980) that depicted Ghanaian life in a postcolonial context. This movie always left a strong nostalgic impression on me. And when I discovered James Barnor’s work, it reminded me of the visuals of this movie. And when you pair his work with music, especially with highlife, you get a visceral feeling, as if you were seeing something special, frozen in time.”14 For the past year, Cofie has been working on an analogue photographic project entitled Sunday Best illustrating the religious life in Accra (fig. 4). One of the young Ghanaian’s images creates an interplay between the patterns of the dresses worn by his sister and three cousins seated on the steps of a staircase. The choice of theme and visual motifs clearly resonates with many Barnor

284

photographs depicting weddings, baptisms and cultural events in Accra in the 1970s and 1980s.

Today, the projects developed by West Africa’s new creative generation show that James Barnor’s images have withstood the test of time. Collectively, these projects clearly shed new light on Barnor’s legacy, whether it be the Area Boys & Brotherhood series by the Ghanaian photographer David Nana Opoku Ansah (b. 1995, Ghana), documenting a community of young men growing up together, or the work of Carlos Idun-Tawiah (b. 1997, Ghana), who defies the stereotypes of the colonial and postcolonial eras in his Obaasima series devoted to the cultural origins of hair braiding in Africa.

Fig. 8 Delali Cofie (b. 2000, Ghana), Sunday Best, 2019

285

Fig. 7 Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990, South Africa), Ka 2-phisi yaka e pinky II, 2013

11. Interview of Lebohang Kganye with Awa Konaté in “James Barnor. Past, Present and Future”, Nataal, 21 April 2021, https://nataal.com/james-barnor-2.

12. Ibid.

13. Telephone conversation between Jessica Sarkodie and the author, 3 March 2022.

14. Telephone conversation between Delali Cofie and the author, 16 February 2022.

In parallel with this North American renown, Barnor’s legacy also comes through, more indirectly, in the visual activism of young photographers like Lebohang Kganye in South Africa (fig. 7) and Silvia Rosi in Italy (fig. 5). In her Ke Lefa Laka series, Kganye juxtaposes old photographs of her mother, retrieved from the family archives, with self-portraits in which she appears assuming the same poses as her mother and dressed in similar clothes to create a new story. Although her artistic practice is technically quite different from Barnor’s, Kganye said in an interview, “Working on Ke Lefa Laka a few years ago, while looking at photographers that worked with Drum magazine, I was intrigued by the sense of playfulness and a suggested performance of ideal selves in James Barnor’s portraits of Black fashionable women.”11 Along similar lines, Silvia Rosi subtly re-examines questions concerning the relationship between memory, clothing and the representation of Black women. On this topic, she says, “James Barnor has always been a great influencer for his ability as an artist to be present and to record history. As an Italian photographer of Togolese descent, I find myself researching my own identity between two continents. In the context of this research, Barnor’s work, as well as my family’s photo albums, act as a compass, for the way in which they guide me through a documentation of the Black experience at times of strong historical transition.”12 Rosi’s compelling mises en scène, against painted backgrounds inspired by African studios, are reminiscent of certain images from the Ever Young studio, including a self-portrait of Barnor with one of his models (cat. 5). The photographer is shown in semi-close-up alongside his friend Béatrice, their elbows resting on a seatback and their eyes conveying a certain melancholy. For both Barnor and Rosi, the studio is above all a place where the subjects can reinvent their identities (fig. 6).

From London to New York, the body of commentary on James Barnor’s legacy shows that his work has found its place in transatlantic visual history since its (re) discovery in the early 21st century. The visual references to his imagery differ, but the same terms are used repeatedly to describe the photographer himself: joie de vivre, an energetic personality, a sharp sense of humour, a great storyteller.

But what of Barnor’s legacy in West Africa? According to Jessica Sarkodie, who is based in Dakar, the photographer’s images offer a nostalgic vision of her forebears’ era, but at the same time constitute an iconographic source for the rest of the world: “His images are highlighting a beauty and an elegance that I’ve always known about, that I’ve been told about from people in my family who were older and that I’ve seen in other pictures not necessarily taken by professionals. And so, for me, James Barnor’s work has not really changed any representation of Blackness. But he brought this representation to the Western world.”13 The young Delali Cofie discovered Barnor when he was researching visual references in the ceremonies of Ghanaian society: “When I was young, I used to watch a movie with my family called Love Brewed in the African Pot (1980) that depicted Ghanaian life in a postcolonial context. This movie always left a strong nostalgic impression on me. And when I discovered James Barnor’s work, it reminded me of the visuals of this movie. And when you pair his work with music, especially with highlife, you get a visceral feeling, as if you were seeing something special, frozen in time.”14 For the past year, Cofie has been working on an analogue photographic project entitled Sunday Best illustrating the religious life in Accra (fig. 4). One of the young Ghanaian’s images creates an interplay between the patterns of the dresses worn by his sister and three cousins seated on the steps of a staircase. The choice of theme and visual motifs clearly resonates with many Barnor

284

photographs depicting weddings, baptisms and cultural events in Accra in the 1970s and 1980s.

Today, the projects developed by West Africa’s new creative generation show that James Barnor’s images have withstood the test of time. Collectively, these projects clearly shed new light on Barnor’s legacy, whether it be the Area Boys & Brotherhood series by the Ghanaian photographer David Nana Opoku Ansah (b. 1995, Ghana), documenting a community of young men growing up together, or the work of Carlos Idun-Tawiah (b. 1997, Ghana), who defies the stereotypes of the colonial and postcolonial eras in his Obaasima series devoted to the cultural origins of hair braiding in Africa.

Fig. 8 Delali Cofie (b. 2000, Ghana), Sunday Best, 2019

285

C H R O N O L O GY Photography is spread throughout the West African region by European colonialists.

Late 1860s

European powers assemble for the Berlin Conference and divide Africa into colonial territories.

1884-1885

The Asante Kingdom of West Africa becomes a British protectorate within the Gold Coast colony.

1902

The National Congress of British West Africa is founded to consolidate support for anti-colonial activism.

1917

1929

Frederick Seton James Barnor is born on 6 June in Accra, Gold Coast.

Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore organise the Fifth Pan-African Congress, held in Manchester. Delegates pledge to fight for the independence of the colonies.

1945

Barnor obtains his Elementary School leaving certificate at the Bishop’s Boys School, Accra, and becomes a teacher at St Mary’s Parish School.

Nkrumah returns to the Gold Coast from the UK to lead the new political movements striving for independence.

1947

Barnor enters a two-year apprenticeship at Yehowa Aakwe studio with J. P. D. Dodoo, a leading portrait photographer in Accra.

Anti-colonialist protests intensify across West Africa.

The Big Six, a coalition of political figures, launch several protests in the Gold Coast.

1947-48

The British “Nationality Act” is passed, leading to increased migration from Commonwealth countries to the UK.

1948

1949

Barnor begins his photographic career in a makeshift outdoor studio in Jamestown, Accra.

The Daily Graphic newspaper is established in Accra, championed by the London Daily Mirror Group.

1950

Barnor joins The Daily Graphic as their first local photojournalist.

Drum magazine is launched in Johannesburg, South Africa, with bureaux throughout Africa and in London.

1951

1952

Barnor begins working for Drum magazine.

1953

Barnor opens the Ever Young Studio in Jamestown, Accra.

287

C H R O N O L O GY Photography is spread throughout the West African region by European colonialists.

Late 1860s

European powers assemble for the Berlin Conference and divide Africa into colonial territories.

1884-1885

The Asante Kingdom of West Africa becomes a British protectorate within the Gold Coast colony.

1902

The National Congress of British West Africa is founded to consolidate support for anti-colonial activism.

1917

1929

Frederick Seton James Barnor is born on 6 June in Accra, Gold Coast.

Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore organise the Fifth Pan-African Congress, held in Manchester. Delegates pledge to fight for the independence of the colonies.

1945

Barnor obtains his Elementary School leaving certificate at the Bishop’s Boys School, Accra, and becomes a teacher at St Mary’s Parish School.

Nkrumah returns to the Gold Coast from the UK to lead the new political movements striving for independence.

1947

Barnor enters a two-year apprenticeship at Yehowa Aakwe studio with J. P. D. Dodoo, a leading portrait photographer in Accra.

Anti-colonialist protests intensify across West Africa.

The Big Six, a coalition of political figures, launch several protests in the Gold Coast.

1947-48

The British “Nationality Act” is passed, leading to increased migration from Commonwealth countries to the UK.

1948

1949

Barnor begins his photographic career in a makeshift outdoor studio in Jamestown, Accra.

The Daily Graphic newspaper is established in Accra, championed by the London Daily Mirror Group.

1950

Barnor joins The Daily Graphic as their first local photojournalist.

Drum magazine is launched in Johannesburg, South Africa, with bureaux throughout Africa and in London.

1951

1952

Barnor begins working for Drum magazine.

1953

Barnor opens the Ever Young Studio in Jamestown, Accra.

287

The Gold Coast becomes one of the first colonies in SubSaharan Africa to gain independence, and is renamed Ghana.

1957

1959

Barnor moves to England to further his study of photography.

1960

Barnor takes evening classes in photography at the London College of Printing, and is introduced to colour photography at the Colour Processing Laboratories (CPL) in Edenbridge, Kent. He enrols at Medway College of Art in Rochester.

1963

The Race Relations Act is introduced, prohibiting discrimination on grounds of race in the UK.

1965

Political instability continues in Ghana leading to a coup d’état and Nkrumah being ousted from power.

1966

Ghana’s ban on party politics is lifted and a new constitution is introduced.

Dr Kofi Busia, representative of the Progress Party (PP), is elected Prime Minister.

1983-1987

Barnor completes his studies, joins the faculty as technical assistant and organises an exhibition of Ghanaian crafts at Medway College of Art.

Barnor’s first Drum cover is published in London.

Barnor works as photographer at the Centre for Educational Television Overseas (CETO), and for Campbell-Drayton advertising agency in London.

1967

Barnor continues to work freelance for Drum, and is employed as a colour printer at the CPL, Edenbridge.

1969

Barnor returns to Ghana after following a training program at Agfa-Gevaert in Northern Europe.

The arrival of digital photography has an impact on Barnor’s commercial studio practice. He pursues his passion for music through the management of the children’s cultural troupe Ebaa Hi Gbiko, later renamed Fee Hi.

1980s

1983

Barnor and Fee Hi tour Italy.

1987

Barnor stops working as an official government photographer but continues his activities at Studio X23, which remains open until 1992.

1994

Barnor returns to the UK and settles in London and then Kent, bringing with him all his negatives, prints, glass plates and other documents.

1994-1996

Barnor is granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK after a lengthy and precarious migration status.

1996

Barnor moves into his current residence in Brentford, West London.

2010

Barnor comes into contact with the Autograph ABP agency, which starts exploring his archive. Some 100 images are selected and digitised. Brought together in an exhibition entitled “Ever Young”, these photographs begin to travel the world.

2016

After publishing a book based on the Autograph ABP collection, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière launches a project for the classification and digitisation of the entire James Barnor archive, resulting in the creation of a database.

Barnor begins a series of residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, for the purpose of annotating his photographs and enriching the database.

2022

First edition of the James Barnor Prize.

1970-1973 Barnor works as manager for Sick Hagemeyer, and establishes Ghana’s first laboratory for colour processing.

A series of military coups take place and leads to a ban on all political parties by 1981. J.J. Rawlings is elected president representing the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

A new democratic constitution written in 1992 makes the registration of political parties legal.

1972-1992

1973 Barnor founds Studio X23 in Accra.

1977-1978 Barnor works as a photographer for the United States Information Service in Ghana.

288

Barnor works as a Ghanaian government photographer at The Castle, Osu, Accra.

289

The Gold Coast becomes one of the first colonies in SubSaharan Africa to gain independence, and is renamed Ghana.

1957

1959

Barnor moves to England to further his study of photography.

1960

Barnor takes evening classes in photography at the London College of Printing, and is introduced to colour photography at the Colour Processing Laboratories (CPL) in Edenbridge, Kent. He enrols at Medway College of Art in Rochester.

1963

The Race Relations Act is introduced, prohibiting discrimination on grounds of race in the UK.

1965

Political instability continues in Ghana leading to a coup d’état and Nkrumah being ousted from power.

1966

Ghana’s ban on party politics is lifted and a new constitution is introduced.

Dr Kofi Busia, representative of the Progress Party (PP), is elected Prime Minister.

1983-1987

Barnor completes his studies, joins the faculty as technical assistant and organises an exhibition of Ghanaian crafts at Medway College of Art.

Barnor’s first Drum cover is published in London.

Barnor works as photographer at the Centre for Educational Television Overseas (CETO), and for Campbell-Drayton advertising agency in London.

1967

Barnor continues to work freelance for Drum, and is employed as a colour printer at the CPL, Edenbridge.

1969

Barnor returns to Ghana after following a training program at Agfa-Gevaert in Northern Europe.

The arrival of digital photography has an impact on Barnor’s commercial studio practice. He pursues his passion for music through the management of the children’s cultural troupe Ebaa Hi Gbiko, later renamed Fee Hi.

1980s

1983

Barnor and Fee Hi tour Italy.

1987

Barnor stops working as an official government photographer but continues his activities at Studio X23, which remains open until 1992.

1994

Barnor returns to the UK and settles in London and then Kent, bringing with him all his negatives, prints, glass plates and other documents.

1994-1996

Barnor is granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK after a lengthy and precarious migration status.

1996

Barnor moves into his current residence in Brentford, West London.

2010

Barnor comes into contact with the Autograph ABP agency, which starts exploring his archive. Some 100 images are selected and digitised. Brought together in an exhibition entitled “Ever Young”, these photographs begin to travel the world.

2016

After publishing a book based on the Autograph ABP collection, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière launches a project for the classification and digitisation of the entire James Barnor archive, resulting in the creation of a database.

Barnor begins a series of residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, for the purpose of annotating his photographs and enriching the database.

2022

First edition of the James Barnor Prize.

1970-1973 Barnor works as manager for Sick Hagemeyer, and establishes Ghana’s first laboratory for colour processing.

A series of military coups take place and leads to a ban on all political parties by 1981. J.J. Rawlings is elected president representing the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

A new democratic constitution written in 1992 makes the registration of political parties legal.

1972-1992

1973 Barnor founds Studio X23 in Accra.

1977-1978 Barnor works as a photographer for the United States Information Service in Ghana.

288

Barnor works as a Ghanaian government photographer at The Castle, Osu, Accra.

289

2019 James Barnor: A Retrospective, Nubuke Foundation, Accra, Ghana 2017 La vie selon James Barnor, 11th biennale des Rencontres, Bamako, Mali Touring to: Mupho, Saint-Louis, Senegal (2017) Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana (2018) Gerard Sekoto Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2019) CCF Windhoek, Namibia (2021) AF Lusaka, Zambia (2022) AF Gaborone, Botswana (2022) 2010 James Barnor: Ever Young, Autograph ABP, London, UK 2007 Mr Barnor’s Independence Diaries, Black Cultural Archives, London, UK 2005 Paul Robeson Theatre, Hounslow, London, UK 2004 Acton Arts Forum, London, UK

2022 Africa Fashion, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK 2021 Todd Webb in Africa: Outside the Frame, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, USA Touring to: Portland Museum of Arts, Portland, Maine (2023) 2019–2020 20 ANS, Les acquisitions du Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris, France 2019 Paris-Londres, Music Migrations (1962–1989), Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris, France.

2018 This Synthetic Moment, David Nolan Gallery, New York, USA. 2015 Work, Rest and Play: British Photography from the 1960s to Today, Shanghai Misheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China 2015 It’s Great to Be Young – James Barnor and Marc Riboud, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, France 2015 Swinging Sixties London – Photography in the Capital of Cool, Foam Fotografie Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2015 Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience, 1950s–1990s, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK 2012 Another London, Tate Britain, London, UK

290

291

P U B L I C AT I O N S

2021 James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, Serpentine, London, UK Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana (MASI), Lugano, Switzerland (2022) Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), Detroit, USA (2023)

GROUP E XHIBITIONS

S O LO E XHIB ITI O NS

2022 James Barnor, Stories, LUMA ARLES, Arles, France

The Roadmaker, Maison CF/RRB Photobooks, 2021 James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, Koenig Books/Serpentine Galleries, 2021 Ever Young, Autograph ABP/Clémentine de la Féronnière, 2015

2019 James Barnor: A Retrospective, Nubuke Foundation, Accra, Ghana 2017 La vie selon James Barnor, 11th biennale des Rencontres, Bamako, Mali Touring to: Mupho, Saint-Louis, Senegal (2017) Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana (2018) Gerard Sekoto Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2019) CCF Windhoek, Namibia (2021) AF Lusaka, Zambia (2022) AF Gaborone, Botswana (2022) 2010 James Barnor: Ever Young, Autograph ABP, London, UK 2007 Mr Barnor’s Independence Diaries, Black Cultural Archives, London, UK 2005 Paul Robeson Theatre, Hounslow, London, UK 2004 Acton Arts Forum, London, UK

2022 Africa Fashion, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK 2021 Todd Webb in Africa: Outside the Frame, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, USA Touring to: Portland Museum of Arts, Portland, Maine (2023) 2019–2020 20 ANS, Les acquisitions du Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris, France 2019 Paris-Londres, Music Migrations (1962–1989), Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris, France.

2018 This Synthetic Moment, David Nolan Gallery, New York, USA. 2015 Work, Rest and Play: British Photography from the 1960s to Today, Shanghai Misheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China 2015 It’s Great to Be Young – James Barnor and Marc Riboud, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, France 2015 Swinging Sixties London – Photography in the Capital of Cool, Foam Fotografie Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2015 Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience, 1950s–1990s, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK 2012 Another London, Tate Britain, London, UK

290

291

P U B L I C AT I O N S

2021 James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, Serpentine, London, UK Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana (MASI), Lugano, Switzerland (2022) Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), Detroit, USA (2023)

GROUP E XHIBITIONS

S O LO E XHIB ITI O NS

2022 James Barnor, Stories, LUMA ARLES, Arles, France

The Roadmaker, Maison CF/RRB Photobooks, 2021 James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, Koenig Books/Serpentine Galleries, 2021 Ever Young, Autograph ABP/Clémentine de la Féronnière, 2015

PU B LIS HER’S N OTE

This book presents a selection from the portfolio of 100 images acquired in 2022 by the LUMA Foundation along with a number of contextual documents.

All of these photographs were produced by James Barnor over a period of 40 years, from 1947 to 1987. The choice of these two dates, which might seem arbitrary, actually reflects a desire to span the photographer’s entire career, from his early days working for his cousin as an apprentice portrait photographer through to the end of his final contract with the Ghanaian government. These four decades, which cover the entire spectrum of Barnor’s photographic output, from studio portraits to photojournalism, from advertising commissions to scenes from daily life, offer the broadest possible overview of his oeuvre.

Despite the documentation work that has been carried out based on interviews with Barnor, historical data and iconographic elements, the dating of these 100 images cannot claim to be perfectly accurate. In addition to information provided by the photographer himself, a preliminary dating by decade was completed based on the geographic location of the settings: a first period in Accra from 1947 to 1959, a British period, marked by the introduction of colour, through to 1969, and then a second Ghanaian period characterised by both colour and black and white images.

Within these three relatively extensive time spans, more precise dating was proposed based on various criteria. First of all, the most reliable source of information is no doubt Barnor’s own vintage prints. Some of them bear handwritten annotations giving the date and the names of the subjects, or – in rarer cases – studio stamps showing the date. At least as much precision is possible for the images of dated historical events, such as the independence celebrations in Accra in March 1957 or the boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Brian London in London in August 1966. Similarly, Barnor’s assignments for advertising campaigns or periodicals, especially Drum magazine, often enable the identification of a date to within a year. This is the case of the shots produced for the Agip calendar of 1974, which can logically be dated to 1973. The cross-referencing of archives can also prove fruitful, as with the photograph of Rosina Mensah, “Miss Accra 1957”, an image of whom from 1958 appears in the photo library of the Information Service Department in Accra.

293

Lastly, the most difficult images to date with precision are the studio photographs and those set in James Barnor’s personal environment.

Nonetheless, in the 1950s certain elements of the decor allow us to specify a date. Between 1949 and 1953, before the opening of his studio in Jamestown, Barnor had his subjects pose in easily identifiable outdoor settings, such as a cemetery, a stairway or among tall plants.

Certain vintage prints of these portraits already bear the “Ever Young” stamp. After the opening of the Jamestown studio, which was in operation from 1953 to 1959, certain periods can be narrowed down based on iconographic elements: for example, we know that the podium on which Barnor’s models posed was removed in 1956, and that the studio’s façade was repainted in that same year.

These iconographic indications are supplemented by technical data concerning the photographic medium. For example, we know that Barnor stopped using glass plates entirely in about 1954. Elements for dating the images taken in the 1970s at Studio X23 are more difficult to find.

In these cases, there are no iconographic clues, requiring us to rely more on technical information, in particular the gradual abandonment of 120mm film, which was slowly replaced by 35mm film in the course of the decade.

This information remains incomplete, resulting in a general trend towards identifying decades rather than specific dates, which explains the less precise dating of the 1970s studio photographs. Generally, the choice was made to retain wide time spans whenever the available information is insufficient to determine the date of an image’s creation with certainty.

Consequently, although the cross-referencing of these various sources – historical, biographical, iconographic and technical – makes it possible to identify the broad time ranges with great precision, it is often difficult to date Barnor’s photographs down to the year. The chronological order used for the presentation of the images in the catalogue cannot thus claim impeccable accuracy, even though the distinction among decades is quite reliable.

PU B LIS HER’S N OTE

This book presents a selection from the portfolio of 100 images acquired in 2022 by the LUMA Foundation along with a number of contextual documents.

All of these photographs were produced by James Barnor over a period of 40 years, from 1947 to 1987. The choice of these two dates, which might seem arbitrary, actually reflects a desire to span the photographer’s entire career, from his early days working for his cousin as an apprentice portrait photographer through to the end of his final contract with the Ghanaian government. These four decades, which cover the entire spectrum of Barnor’s photographic output, from studio portraits to photojournalism, from advertising commissions to scenes from daily life, offer the broadest possible overview of his oeuvre.

Despite the documentation work that has been carried out based on interviews with Barnor, historical data and iconographic elements, the dating of these 100 images cannot claim to be perfectly accurate. In addition to information provided by the photographer himself, a preliminary dating by decade was completed based on the geographic location of the settings: a first period in Accra from 1947 to 1959, a British period, marked by the introduction of colour, through to 1969, and then a second Ghanaian period characterised by both colour and black and white images.

Within these three relatively extensive time spans, more precise dating was proposed based on various criteria. First of all, the most reliable source of information is no doubt Barnor’s own vintage prints. Some of them bear handwritten annotations giving the date and the names of the subjects, or – in rarer cases – studio stamps showing the date. At least as much precision is possible for the images of dated historical events, such as the independence celebrations in Accra in March 1957 or the boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Brian London in London in August 1966. Similarly, Barnor’s assignments for advertising campaigns or periodicals, especially Drum magazine, often enable the identification of a date to within a year. This is the case of the shots produced for the Agip calendar of 1974, which can logically be dated to 1973. The cross-referencing of archives can also prove fruitful, as with the photograph of Rosina Mensah, “Miss Accra 1957”, an image of whom from 1958 appears in the photo library of the Information Service Department in Accra.

293

Lastly, the most difficult images to date with precision are the studio photographs and those set in James Barnor’s personal environment.

Nonetheless, in the 1950s certain elements of the decor allow us to specify a date. Between 1949 and 1953, before the opening of his studio in Jamestown, Barnor had his subjects pose in easily identifiable outdoor settings, such as a cemetery, a stairway or among tall plants.

Certain vintage prints of these portraits already bear the “Ever Young” stamp. After the opening of the Jamestown studio, which was in operation from 1953 to 1959, certain periods can be narrowed down based on iconographic elements: for example, we know that the podium on which Barnor’s models posed was removed in 1956, and that the studio’s façade was repainted in that same year.

These iconographic indications are supplemented by technical data concerning the photographic medium. For example, we know that Barnor stopped using glass plates entirely in about 1954. Elements for dating the images taken in the 1970s at Studio X23 are more difficult to find.

In these cases, there are no iconographic clues, requiring us to rely more on technical information, in particular the gradual abandonment of 120mm film, which was slowly replaced by 35mm film in the course of the decade.

This information remains incomplete, resulting in a general trend towards identifying decades rather than specific dates, which explains the less precise dating of the 1970s studio photographs. Generally, the choice was made to retain wide time spans whenever the available information is insufficient to determine the date of an image’s creation with certainty.

Consequently, although the cross-referencing of these various sources – historical, biographical, iconographic and technical – makes it possible to identify the broad time ranges with great precision, it is often difficult to date Barnor’s photographs down to the year. The chronological order used for the presentation of the images in the catalogue cannot thus claim impeccable accuracy, even though the distinction among decades is quite reliable.

Maja Hoffmann, Founder and President of LUMA

Editorial direction Matthieu Humery and Clémentine de la Féronnière Scientific expertise Margaux Laverhne Isabella Seniuta Editorial assistance Sophie Culière Nathan Magdelain Graphic design Nelly Riedel

Mustapha Bouhayati, CEO LUMA Arles Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Director of Exhibitions and Programmes Production Luz Gyalui, production manager Barbara Blanc, director of the artwork management and preservation department Clément Château, production agent Alice Cattelat, scenography and production assistant

Translation David Jaggard (French to English) Jean-Yves Cotté (English to French) Copy editing Marion Lacroix (French) Bernard Wooding (English) Photoengraving Daniel Regard (Les Artisans du Regard) Published in the United Kingdom by RRB Photobooks, Bristol Rudi Thoemmes, Josie Atkinson

PH OTO CRED ITS & CO PYRI G HTS

Matthieu Humery, curator Clémentine de la Féronnière, deputy curator Margaux Laverhne, scientific curator Isabella Seniuta, scientific curator Sophie Culière, archivist

PUBLISHING

EXHIBITION

This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition James Barnor: Stories Pictures from the Archive (1947–1987) at the Tour du Parc des Ateliers, LUMA ARLES, from July 4, 2022.

Texts Damarice Amao Margaux Laverhne Bianca Manu Hans Ulrich Obrist Isabella Seniuta Photo credits © James Barnor/courtesy of Autograph ABP: p. 6, 14, 65, 66 (left), 68, 92, 102, 104, 164, 168, 172, 204, 244, 246, 256, 260, 261, 263, 271 (right), 275, 279 and 283 © James Barnor/courtesy of Centre Pompidou MNAM – CCI, Paris: p. 17, 120, 126 © James Barnor/courtesy of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris: p. 18, 33, 138 © James Barnor/courtesy of the Véronique and Frédérique Clavière-Schiele collection: p. 132, 140 © James Barnor/courtesy of the Safar Family collection: p.

150 (left) © James Barnor/courtesy of October Gallery: p. 202 © James Barnor/courtesy of the DIA, Detroit Institute of Arts: p. 122 © James Barnor courtesy of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière except for the following: Courtesy of the British Library: p. 31 Courtesy of Sciences Po Bordeaux: p. 35, 130, 142, 146, 150 (right), 269 Courtesy of Diamantino Quintas: p. 36-37 © Delali Cofie, p. 285 © Liz Johnson Arthur, p. 280 © Lebohang Kganye, p. 284 © Tyler Mitchell, p. 278 © Stephen Tayo, p. 281 © Silvia Rosi, p. 282

Maja Hoffmann, Founder and President of LUMA

Editorial direction Matthieu Humery and Clémentine de la Féronnière Scientific expertise Margaux Laverhne Isabella Seniuta Editorial assistance Sophie Culière Nathan Magdelain Graphic design Nelly Riedel

Mustapha Bouhayati, CEO LUMA Arles Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Director of Exhibitions and Programmes Production Luz Gyalui, production manager Barbara Blanc, director of the artwork management and preservation department Clément Château, production agent Alice Cattelat, scenography and production assistant

Translation David Jaggard (French to English) Jean-Yves Cotté (English to French) Copy editing Marion Lacroix (French) Bernard Wooding (English) Photoengraving Daniel Regard (Les Artisans du Regard) Published in the United Kingdom by RRB Photobooks, Bristol Rudi Thoemmes, Josie Atkinson

PH OTO CRED ITS & CO PYRI G HTS

Matthieu Humery, curator Clémentine de la Féronnière, deputy curator Margaux Laverhne, scientific curator Isabella Seniuta, scientific curator Sophie Culière, archivist

PUBLISHING

EXHIBITION

This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition James Barnor: Stories Pictures from the Archive (1947–1987) at the Tour du Parc des Ateliers, LUMA ARLES, from July 4, 2022.

Texts Damarice Amao Margaux Laverhne Bianca Manu Hans Ulrich Obrist Isabella Seniuta Photo credits © James Barnor/courtesy of Autograph ABP: p. 6, 14, 65, 66 (left), 68, 92, 102, 104, 164, 168, 172, 204, 244, 246, 256, 260, 261, 263, 271 (right), 275, 279 and 283 © James Barnor/courtesy of Centre Pompidou MNAM – CCI, Paris: p. 17, 120, 126 © James Barnor/courtesy of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris: p. 18, 33, 138 © James Barnor/courtesy of the Véronique and Frédérique Clavière-Schiele collection: p. 132, 140 © James Barnor/courtesy of the Safar Family collection: p.

150 (left) © James Barnor/courtesy of October Gallery: p. 202 © James Barnor/courtesy of the DIA, Detroit Institute of Arts: p. 122 © James Barnor courtesy of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière except for the following: Courtesy of the British Library: p. 31 Courtesy of Sciences Po Bordeaux: p. 35, 130, 142, 146, 150 (right), 269 Courtesy of Diamantino Quintas: p. 36-37 © Delali Cofie, p. 285 © Liz Johnson Arthur, p. 280 © Lebohang Kganye, p. 284 © Tyler Mitchell, p. 278 © Stephen Tayo, p. 281 © Silvia Rosi, p. 282

Printed in Verona, Italy by EBS, April 2022.