James Barnor

James Barnor (b. 1929, Ghana) lives and works in the United Kingdom. He opened his renowned Ever Young studio in Accra, where he immortalized a nation at the moment of its independence. He was one of the first photojournalists to collaborate with The Daily Graphic, a newspaper published in Ghana by London’s Daily Mirror Group. In 1959, two years after Ghana’s independence, Barnor moved to London to deepen his technical knowledge of the medium. He discovered colour photography at the Medway College of Art and his pictures were published on the front page of Drum, an important magazine founded in South Africa in 1951 and symbol of the anti-apartheid movement. He eloquently captured the spirit of Swinging London and the experiences of the African diaspora in the British capital. In the late 1960s, he was recruited by Agfa-Gevaert and returned to Ghana to set up the country’s first colour laboratory. He stayed there for the next twenty years, working in his new Studio X23 as a freelance photographer and for state agencies in Accra.

Today he devotes most of his time to his work, in a spirit of transmission Barnor’s work has been included in several exhibitions and publications, including a touring retrospective curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, shown at the Serpentine in London (2021), MASI Lugano, Switzerland (2022) and the Detroit Institute of Art, MI, US (2023). The show James Barnor: Stories, Pictures from the Archive (1947-1987), curated by Matthieu Humery, opened at LUMA Arles, France in 2022, and was marked by the launch of the James Barnor Prize, dedicated to African photographers. In October 2023, James Barnor, Studio of Life opened at FOMU Antwerp, in Belgium.

Portrait, James Barnor, Self-portrait with a store assistant at the West African Drug Company, central Accra, 1952. Courtesy Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière © James Barnor.