The 94-year-old British-Ghanaian photographer James Barnor calls himself “Lucky Jim” — he’s been “at the right place at the right time and met the right people” during a career spanning more than six decades and two continents, he said in a recent telephone interview from his London home.
It’s easy to believe him looking at “James Barnor: Accra/London,” a major retrospective of his work across genres — studio and street photography, photojournalism and fashion, images that range from the quietly intimate to the historical and iconic.
Shown at the Serpentine Galleries in London in 2021, the exhibition is on view in an expanded form at the Detroit Institute of Arts, through Oct. 15.
Take a modest picture by Barnor from 1952 of Roy Ankrah, a Commonwealth featherweight boxing champion.
Barnor posed the three on Nkrumah’s couch — and then jumped into the frame, perching on an armrest, becoming part of a momentous history unfolding.
Persons:
James Barnor, “ Lucky Jim ” — he’s, Barnor, Roy Ankrah, Ankrah, Rebecca, Kwame Nkrumah
Organizations:
Detroit Institute of Arts, Commonwealth
Locations:
Ghanaian, Accra, London, ”, Republic of Ghana