This new chapter drawn from his archive presents a set of unpublished prints, around the question of the self-portrait and his own staging. His journey, from pre-independence Ghana to the United Kingdom, and back again, is marked by images that have become iconic. From the classic studio portraits of the 1950s, one already sensed the photographer's personality and mischief. The closeness and ease of the press images, from independence in 1957, and then those tinged with fashion in the 1960s, suggested his engaging personality. The photographs of the diaspora in Britain are, for their part, witnesses to great moments of friendship the photographer experienced, those encounters that changed his life. Finally, upon his return to Ghana in the early 1970s, he excelled at staging, whether to have an assistant pose with developing chemical canisters in place of a colour chart, or the series used to illustrate the 1974 calendar of the Agip brand.
In this exhibition, it is thus James Barnor that we find in the images bearing witness to his life: a young father standing tall on his legs, posing with his first son in a christening gown in the courtyard of his studio in Ghana; him again, wearing his kente in front of a road sign reading "England", captured by his great friend Dennis Kemp; him once more, in the 1950s, in a striped suit, capturing an event. More than winks, these images seem to be the soul of the archive, unearthed today in the light of his life.
The archive of James Barnor, which was catalogued and registered with James Barnor at the gallery between 2017 and 2021, has in recent years been the fruit of numerous studies, research projects and exhibitions, which have allowed the general public to recognise his work.
It is a great joy to present alongside them an unprecedited new part. On 22 October the exhibition Le temps des récoltes, by Ibrahim Mahama, will open at the Fondation Cartier. The links between James Barnor and Ibrahim Mahama are many: Ghana, yes, but also the awareness of the importance of the archive, of registration, and the question of return and of the participation of younger generations in Ghana. For this presentation in the new space of the Fondation Cartier, Ibrahim Mahama selected several parts of the photographer's work, notably the images of the Agip series, the very same images we had exhibited at his art centre in Tamale in 2024 during the festival we had produced on the occasion of his 95th birthday, and which are still visible there. This event will mark James Barnor's return to Paris; a programme of encounters will be announced later.