Welcome to one fine show, where Observer highlights a recently opened show at a museum outside New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.
The Ghanaian photographer James Barnor is reportedly fond of a proverb that goes, “A civilization flourishes when people plant trees under which they will never sit.” This ethos is evident in almost every work on display in the recently opened show at the Detroit Institute of Arts, “James Barnor: Accra/London—A Retrospective,” which features over 170 photos from Barnor’s archive of over 32,000 images dating from the 1950s to 1980s, and was initially organized by London’s Serpentine. This show of Barnor’s photography documents the two cities in its title in moments of great transition, and its intensely human subjects might be said to be the saplings under which we sit today.
Barnor was born in 1929. He started going to London in 1959, two years after Ghana’s independence, traveling back and forth between the two countries until he settled in London in 1994. His photography sits at the intersection of street style and journalism, but the enthusiasm coming from behind the camera is such that there’s almost the feeling of the paparazzi mixed in there too, even when his subject is not famous.
Take A group of friends after the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Sackey, Balham, London (1966), which shows a group of three black men and two blonde women, each caught with such different emotions on their faces and in their bodies that it’s difficult to project simple narratives about race or love onto it. This is a moment, and Barnor’s only agenda seems to be capturing it in all its density.
Here’s another Barnorism: “People are more important than places.” If you ignore the labels as you look at the photos in this show, some of which have been added from the DIA’s own collection, it’s hard to tell whether the photos are from Carnaby Street or Africa. Barnor isn’t about signifiers, he’s about gestures, posture, expressions. In Nashdom Abbey, Francis Thompson (1962) a monk leans against a wall, pondering something existential while wishing perhaps that he didn’t notice the photographer as much as he does.
Here is Muhammad Ali surrounded by fans after winning the Earl’s Court fight against Brian London, London (1966) but The Champ is staring to the right of the camera along with his fans, for something has caught all of their attention—or more accurately, their individual attentions, in extremely different ways. It’s remarkable to pull off this flattening of context while still creating images that are so of their time and place. And pretty funny that nobody seems too enthusiastic about meeting Vice President Richard Nixon in Ghana in 1957.
James Barnor: Accra/London—A Retrospective is on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts through October 15, 2023