James Barnor, witness to a Changing Ghana

A woman poses for the camera, seated on a giant box of Agfa photo film in Accra, Ghana. The date is October 22, 1970, and Ghanaian photographer James Barnor has recently returned home after spending ten years documenting the experience of the African and Caribbean diaspora in London – a bustling, multicultural melting pot.  

Barnor, born in Accra in 1929, witnessed the immense social and cultural upheavals of the 20th century. Soon after becoming a photographer in 1949, he opened his first studio, Ever Young, where he chronicled a country in the throes of change ahead of its independence in 1957. In 1959, he moved to England to study color photography – at the time, a technology still in its infancy. He then spent time honing his skills at Agfa-Gevaert’s laboratories in Germany and Belgium. Once back in Ghana, he became the brand’s representative and opened the country’s first commercial color photography laboratory, in Accra. In 1973, he founded Studio X23, where he documented the comings and goings of Ghanaian society in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1994, he returned to the UK, where he still lives today. 

Miss Agfa Night was the name of a competition organized by Barnor, who invited local photographers to produce the best photograph of “Miss Agfa” in Accra’s Tip Toe Lane district, where his laboratory was located. 

The Miss Agfa Night series was added to the Photo Elysée collection in 2024. The museum’s acquisition policy focuses on works by photographers currently underrepresented in its collection, including non-Western and women artists.