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James Barnor s Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant, Accra (around 1971) Courtesy of Autograph
The British-Ghanaian photographer James Barnor made his start on the streets of Accra in pre-Independence Ghana using borrowed equipment. By 1953 he had started his own studio called Ever Young in the Jamestown area of Accra, which was visited by civil-servants, dignitaries, artists and newly-weds alike. The images he took there were ostensibly formal portraits but set against elaborate painted backgrounds and, thanks to his rapport with his sitters, they fizz with energy.
“He said his studio was a little bit like a community centre,” says Lizzie Carey-Thomas, the curator of a forthcoming survey of Barnor’s work at the Serpentine North Gallery in London. “[The studio] was next to one of the most well-known hotels in Accra, and so he had a steady flow of people dropping in to see him all day and all night.” Visitors would come for a variety of reasons: p