Ever Young
James Barnor
Autograph
In Association with éditions Clémentine de la Féronnière
Edited by Renée Mussai
Hardcover
176 pages
410 x 260 mm
2015
ISBN 9782954226644
Born in 1929 in Accra, James Barnor is considered a pioneer of Ghanaian photography. His career covers a remarkable period in history, bridging continents and photographic genres to create a transatlantic narrative marked by his passionate interest in people and cultures. Through the medium of portraiture, Barnor’s photographs represent societies in transition: Ghana moving towards its independence and London becoming a cosmopolitan, multicultural metropolis.
This monograph is a comprehensive survey of six decades of his photography with 200 images, texts by Kobena Mercer and Renée Mussai, plus an interview with the artist by Margaret Busby OBE and Francis Hodgson.
Barnor began work as a photographer in Accra in 1947 where he set up the Ever Young studio, taking photographs of the local community. He also worked as a photojournalist for the Daily Graphic and the South African anti-apartheid black lifestyle magazine Drum, which led him to London in the 1960s. Barnor returned to Ghana at the end of the 1960s where he helped open the country’s first colour-processing laboratory. In 1993 he returned to London where he continues to live today.
Published to accompany, and expand on, Autograph’s major touring exhibition of James Barnor’s work.
About the Artist
James Barnor (b.1929) was Ghana’s first international press photographer. He came from a family of photographers and established his own studio in Accra, Ever Young in 1950. He worked from this studio at the time of Ghana’s independence whilst also selling his pictures to the Daily Graphic and Drum magazines. He came to Britain in 1959, and whilst working in a factory, he took photography evening classes at the London College of Printmaking and lessons with the Colour Processing Laboratory in Kent. He went on to study at Medway College of Arts, where he gained employment as a technician, eventually returning to Accra in 1969, where he established X23, the city’s first colour photography studio. He returned to London in the 1990s.
(source https://bristolphotofestival.org/james-barnor-ghanaian-modernist/)
About the Publisher
Autograph’s mission is to enable the public to explore identity, representation, human rights and social justice through work produced by artists who use photography and film
autograph.org.uk
Founded in May 2011, the Clémentine de la Féronnière gallery and publishing house were created with the will to support the work of its photographers on a long-term basis. The gallery represents James Barnor, FLORE, Peter Mitchell, Anne Rearick and Guillaume Zuili. Based on the Ile-Saint-Louis in Paris, in the second courtyard of a listed historical edifice, the gallery hosts an average of five exhibitions per year and has quickly found its place among major international photography fairs.
galerieclementinedelaferonniere.fr
(source https://www.comitedesgaleriesdart.com/en/galeries/galerie-clementine-de-la-feronniere/)
