A Matter of Record: Black Photography in Ghana

Historians did not write the early histories of Africa; missionaries, adventurers, explorers and conquerors defined Africa first. By 1900 the "Conradization" and the "Kiplingization" of Africa were well under way. The imagery of the "Dark Continent," so pervasive even in today's literature, was crystallized long ago, and the literature of that era mirrors the early photographs that emerged from Africa.

European photographic depictions of Africa generally fell along four lines of representation: subjects that were half-naked (especially women), fierce warriors, blank-faced chiefs or posed in submissive positions. Photographs depicting Africans in any other light were anomalies, even though there was another whole world of African depictions. There always has been.

When Africans began photographing themselves in the mid- to late 1800s, the imagery changed. Subjects were not required to be naked, submissive or royal. Africans focused on family, on village firsts, on watershed events. In Ghana--a country where ancestral veneration brings a sense of equilibrium to the living and helps them stay healthy--photography touched on an extremely important aspect of Ghanaian culture by allowing for the "ultimate" in ancestor worship. It also served another vital social component in Ghanaian life: It gave opposing parties a means by which to settle chieftaincy disputes. In villages where there are no written records of who was or was not a chief decades ago, a photograph can be proof positive of a family's claim to a "stool," or throne. A photograph of someone's grandfather sitting on a stool or wearing a certain type of kente cloth can serve as evidence to villagers that a claim to a throne is legitimate.

No one knows who was the first African photographer in Ghana. In all likelihood, there were various adventurers and missionaries running around the Gold Coast (which is what Ghana was called before its independence from Britain in 1957) with cameras as early as the 1850s. The Basel Mission, whose ties to the Gold Coast date back to 1821, claims that some of its missionaries were using cameras there as early as 1856.

European traders came to the shores of what is now Ghana at the end of the 15th century to compete in the gold and slave trades. The Fanti, one of the best known and most important West African ethnic groups, had already established a centralized government there. They traded their gold for European goods, such as guns, spices, iron and copper products, alcohol, fine china, and cloth.

After the advent of British colonial rule in 1844, African merchants exerted considerable influence over the commercial affairs of the Gold Coast, and in 1865 they began trying their hands at new commercial ventures, such as baking, printing and photography. There was no intention that these new businesses would supplant the traditional economy already in place. Instead, the new businesses would create a "modern economy" that would operate alongside the traditional indigenous economy.

One of the first black newspapers in the Gold Coast, the African Times, started a campaign in the spring of 1868 aimed at helping Africans establish new commercial occupations. Photography was one of the new occupations encouraged. From the 1870s to the end of the 1930s, black photographers in the Gold Coast made great strides in spreading the use of cameras.

Evidence suggests that the Fanti were the first Africans in the Gold Coast to learn photography and to use their cameras to earn incomes. The Basel Mission has in its collection several photographs taken by a Fanti photographer named Fred Grant, who is reputed to have been taking photographs in the Cape Coast area as early as 1873 or 1874.

How Grant got his camera is hard to say. The Fanti had long been involved in adopting Western ways. For instance, speaking "proper" English and achieving a Western-style education are long-standing hallmarks of Fanti life; hence, such common Fanti names as Grant, Smith, Jones, Clark(e), Williams and Bannerman. Cape Coast was still the colonial seat of power of the Gold Coast during Grant's heyday (the British did not move the capital to Accra until 1877), and the range of goods that flowed through the port was tremendous.

Grant and other photographers like Grant could have acquired their cameras by a variety of means. A few Fanti shopkeepers could have ordered cameras from British shipping centers, such as Liverpool. African merchants who visited family and friends in Europe could have purchased cameras and brought them or shipped them to the Gold Coast. Perhaps a handful of Africans purchased cameras from visitors to Cape Coast.

Several modern-day Ghanaian photographers believe that Fanti workers hired to assist British colonial administrators sometimes received cameras as gifts. When British visitors departed, they would leave their cameras with their workers.

By 1891, visitors to the Gold Coast were noting the existence of black commercial photographers operating in various coastal cities. Historian Robert Szerecezwksi, in Structural Changes in the Economy of Ghana, 1891/1911 (Oxford Press, 1915) acknowledged and documented the existence of these photographers. Although their numbers were still small, black photographers were beginning to make an impact in the Gold Coast.

By 1900, black photographers in the Gold Coast had begun creating "circuits": Each photographer would define specific territory that he would cover exclusively. Competitors adhered to a "gentleman's agreement" to stay out of other photographers' areas.

Mobility was key during this period. African photographers had to go where opportunities presented themselves. Sometimes this meant traveling hundreds of miles from their homes. Photographic circuits reached even the most remote parts of the Gold Coast and afforded nonwealthy Africans the opportunity to have family portraits taken. If a family wanted photographs, they' knew that every year at the same time, the person making the circuit in their area would come. Some families would save for an entire year so that they could afford to have photographs taken.

As Ghana's black elite class grew between 1900 and 1910, many of them wanted to capture watershed events in their villages. Photographing these events made sense, because in some villages no one was available to write about the occasions. Some of the most common events captured during this period were village firsts: the first European-style home built for wealthy Africans, a village's first automobile, clock, bicycle or shop.

The owners of these firsts were proud of their accomplishments. Wealthy Africans could demonstrate to the rest of the world their acquired "civilized" European tastes. Successful Africans enjoyed posing in front of their European-style homes or being photographed wearing the best in European fashions. In time, several of the black photographers became wealthy in their own right.

However, the constant traveling required of circuit photographers placed strains on family life. They needed to have the ability to generate income while maintaining their families' sense of continuity. This dilemma caused some black photographers in Cape Coast, Elmina, Saltpond and other towns to create the next step in the evolution of black commercial photography in Ghana. Justus Holm (whose work is discussed in the Red Book of West Africa, published by Frank Cass Publisher in 1920) and other Africans ushered in the era of the stationary studio in the Gold Coast. A studio was generally a small house with one of its rooms serving as the parlor, where a photographer photographed his clients.

By 1930, many black photographers were operating in the Gold Coast, from Anomabo to Accra. The hotbeds for the profession were areas like Dixcove and Takoradi, both dominated by the Fanti and both critical to British colonial commercial interests.

Emerging coastal towns, such as Teshie and Nungua, witnessed an increase in the number of studios. Black photographers also made their presence known in the Volta region, Kumasi, Tamale, and even areas as remote as Wa. What began in Cape Coast would spread throughout the entire colony in less than six decades.

Any black person in the Gold Coast who learned the art of photography was a source of great pride for other Africans in the colony. Photography was a purely western invention that encompassed a complex and intricate technology. If Africans had the ability to learn the art of photography, what did this say about African intelligence? More important, what did it say about African life and culture? European depictions of Africa explain why so many people do not understand Africa or Africans, but they also underscore the need for Western minds to explore, appreciate and accept another concept of Africa.

Kevin Joseph Hales is a historian and a Fulbright scholar conducting advanced research in Ghana on the origins of black commercial photography in the Gold Coast.

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