📸 Two girls photographed during James Barnor’s apprenticeship at J.P.D. Dodoo’s studio, Yehowa Aakwe, with the studio’s signature paper flowers, Zion Street, Jamestown, Accra, c. 1948–49 + an album made by James Barnor, showing Accra life and portraits of the CPP (Convention People’s Party) MPs’ portraits taken between 1951 and 1957 “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. Somehow, I met him on the street 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.” Excerpt from the interview of James Barnor by @hansulrichobrist, originally published in the exhibition catalogue of James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, 2021; republished in the exhibition catalogue James Barnor: Stories, 2022. 🚨It’s the last few days to James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, on until July 31st at @masilugano! #jamesbarnor #jamesbarnorarchives #stories #hansulrichobrist #masilugano #lugano