Ghana's James Barnor to receive Outstanding Contribution to Photography award
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The World Photography Organisation has announced that 97-year-old Ghanaian photographer James Barnor will receive its Outstanding Contribution to Photography award at the 2027 Sony World Photography Awards. The ceremony takes place in London on 15 April 2027.
The World Photography Organisation has announced that Ghanaian photographer James Barnor, now 97, will receive the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award at the 2027 Sony World Photography Awards. He will be presented with the honour at a ceremony in London on 15 April 2027.
Born in 1929, Barnor learned photography from his cousin J. P. D. Dodoo, a prominent photographer in colonial-era Accra. At 21 he became the first staff photographer at Ghana's Daily Graphic newspaper and covered political rallies, parades and the road to independence in 1957. He photographed Kwame Nkrumah declaring Ghana free from British rule, although film processing delays kept those pictures out of the papers. In 1953 he opened Ever Young studio in Accra's Jamestown district, where people from students to judges posed for portraits.
Barnor moved to Britain in 1959, studied at Medway College of Art and worked as a colour printer. He also worked for the South African magazine Drum, photographing London's African diaspora in the 1960s and putting Black models and celebrities on its covers and fashion pages. After training with Agfa-Gevaert in Belgium and Germany, he returned to Ghana in 1970 and helped set up the country's first commercial colour-processing laboratory.
Widely considered a pioneer of African photography, his work has been shown at the Serpentine Gallery, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Modern Art. A retrospective of more than 50 photographs and archival materials will run at Somerset House from 16 April to 3 May 2027.
