Lucky Jim: James Barnor

Seven years after James Barnor’s last exhibition at the gallery, the photographer, now 97, continues to surprise us. This new chapter drawn from his archive brings together a group of previously unseen prints turning on the question of the self-portrait and of his own self-staging. His path, from pre-independence Ghana to the United Kingdom and back, is punctuated by images that have since become iconic. In the classic studio shots of the 1950s, the photographer’s personality and mischief could already be sensed. The intimacy and ease of the press pictures, of independence in 1957, and then of the fashion-inflected images of the 1960s, hinted at his infectious character. The photographs of the diaspora in Britain, for their part, bear witness to the great friendships of the photographer’s life, those encounters that changed it. And on his return to Ghana in the early 1970s, he excelled at the art of staging – whether posing an assistant with canisters of processing chemicals in place of a colour chart, or in the series that illustrated the Agip calendar in 1974. In this exhibition, then, it is James Barnor himself we find again in the images that stand witness to his life: a young father, squarely on his feet, posing with his first son in a christening gown in the courtyard of his studio in Ghana; then again, wearing his kente in front of an “England” road sign, caught by his great friend Dennis Kemp; and earlier still, in the 1950s, in a striped suit, covering an event. More than mere nods, these images seem to be the soul of the archive, brought out today in the light of his life.
James Barnor’s archive, sorted and catalogued with James Barnor at the gallery between 2017 and 2021, has in recent years been the fruit of extensive study, research and exhibitions, 
which have brought his work wide public recognition.

It is a great joy to present an unseen chapter of it alongside him. On 22 October, the exhibition Le Temps des Récoltes by Ibrahim Mahama opens at the Fondation Cartier. The ties between James Barnor and Ibrahim Mahama are many: Ghana, of course, but also a shared awareness of the importance of the archive and of the act of recording, and the question of returning and of the involvement of younger generations in Ghana. For this presentation in the Fondation Cartier’s new space, Ibrahim Mahama has selected several strands of the photographer’s work, notably images from the Agip series – the same images we showed at his art centre in Tamale in 2024, during the festival we produced for his 95th birthday, and which are still on view there today. The event will mark James Barnor’s return to Paris; a programme of talks will be announced in due course.