Patron of ARTification. Exhibiting & artist talks with us since 2003.
James Barnor (born 6 June 1929) is a Ghanaian photographer who has been based in London, UK, since the 1990s. His career spans six decades, and although for much of that period his work was not widely known it has latterly been discovered by new audiences. In his street and studio photography Barnor represents societies in transition: Ghana moving toward Independence, and London becoming a multicultural metropolis. 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 60s, so I call myself Lucky Jim." He was Ghana's first full-time newspaper photographer in the 1950s, and he is credited with introducing colour processing to Ghana in the '70s. It has been said: "James Barnor is to Ghana and photojournalism what Ousmane Sembène was to Senegal and African cinema."