James Barnor works Loaned to Detroit Institute of Arts

Autograph is delighted to loan more than 50 works from our collection by British-Ghanaian photographer James Barnor, to Serpentine's touring exhibition James Barnor: Accra/London - A Retrospective at Detroit Institution of Art.

This major loan reflects Autograph's longstanding commitment to and advocacy of Barnor's work, and features works unearthed and printed for the first time during Autograph’s curatorial archive research programme, The Missing Chapter, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2009-10. It was our great pleasure to introduce Barnor's remarkable photographs with his first comprehensive solo exhibition James Barnor: Ever Young at Autograph's gallery in Hackney more than a decade ago.

Born in 1929 in Accra, Barnor is considered a pioneer of Ghanaian photography – with a career that spans six decades and covers a remarkable period in history, bridging continents and photographic genres to create transatlantic narratives marked by his passionate interest in people and culture. Through street and studio portraiture, Barnor’s photographs represent societies in transition: Ghana moving towards its independence and London becoming a cosmopolitan, multicultural metropolis during the ‘swinging sixties’.

A trained studio photographer and photojournalist, Barnor photographed friends and family as well as fashion models and celebrities, who would pose for him against the backdrop of the city’s most iconic monuments - often commissioned by Drum magazine, South Africa’s influential anti-apartheid journal for lifestyle and politics – before returning to Accra in 1969. He is now widely recognised as a major figure in contemporary African photography and celebrated globally.