James Barnor

With a practice spanning six decades and two continents, ranging from street to studio and fashion to documentary, Ghanaian photographer James Barnor (b.1929) is now recognised as a pivotal figure in the history of photography. Moving between Accra and London throughout his life, Barnor´s photographic portraits visibly map societies in transition: Ghana winning independence from Britain, and London embracing the freedoms of the swinging sixties. He has said: ´I was lucky to be alive when things were happening ... when Ghana was going to be independent and Ghana became independent, and when I came to England the Beatles were around. Things were happening in the sixties, so I call myself Lucky Jim.´
Barnor´s photographs have been described as ´slices of history, documenting race and modernity in the post-colonial world´, and he has been the subject of several major retrospectives over the last fifteen years. This concise survey in the Photofile series is the perfect overview of his multifaceted work.