To talk about coverage of Africa’s cultural, social and political movements of the 20th century is to talk about the magazine Drum. And the editorial and fashion work of photographer James Barnor — on view through Oct. 15 at the Detroit Institute of Arts — is squarely at the center.

It can be difficult to explain Drum’s importance in Africa in the Fifties and Sixties; for Americans, the closest analogy might be Life magazine, in the scope of subjects. But Drum was much more; for one thing, it had a strong political point of view during the turbulent years as Africa fought for its independence and a new generation of widely photographed media-savvy global leaders emerged.

Drum was a voice and a force, and Barnor’s association with it brought his images to millions of avid readers.

Founded in South Africa in 1951, the magazine was initially titled The African Drum and intended as a lifestyle magazine for white South Africans. It struggled to be successful until a financier named Jim Bailey bought it, dropped “African” from the name, and rebranded it to appeal to the emerging Black middle class¹ with an editorial team that knew what mattered to them. From then on, Drum focused its coverage on Black African culture, openly supporting Pan Africanism and its rejection of Western culture and building up Black voices in South Africa and elsewhere as the magazine grew within Africa and then internationally.

In 1950s and ‘60s South Africa, apartheid was a fact of daily life, and Drum played a role in the resistance against the National Party and its oppressive policies. Bailey, along with journalists including Can Themba, Lewis Nkosi, and Todd Matshikiza, exposed life under apartheid and documented the experiences of the oppressed. One of Drum’s most iconic moves was publishing an article by journalist Nat Nakasa, which detailed the Defiance Campaign of 1952, led by Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. Drum was there to report on the struggles and triumphs of the anti-apartheid movement, and the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, where 69 people peacefully protesting South Africa’s pass laws were killed outside a police station.

As its popularity grew, Drum opened satellite offices throughout Africa, including one in Accra, Ghana’s capitol. Barnor began freelancing for Drum in 1952, a year before he founded his landmark studio, Ever Young. That association continued, in Ghana and then in London, until 1967.

In Ghana, Barnor’s work for Drum was largely focused on covering current events. Then, in the late 1950s, Barnor moved to London to study color photography technology, which was rapidly replacing black-and-white. By then, Drum had opened a London office. With his keen eye for street style and his new skills with color photography, Barnor chronicled the intersection of the Swinging Sixties and London’s rapidly growing African community, snapping everything from stylish young people on the street to moments of daily life.

The relationship between photographer and magazine was, in the end, symbiotic. Drum gave Barnor a massive audience and the prestige of being associated with the magazine that was capturing the moment; Barnor gave Drum some of its most striking and memorable images.

To learn more about Barnor’s work for Drum, visit James Barnor: London / Accra—A Retrospective, on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts through Oct. 15, 2023.

James Barnor, who recently turned 94, lives in London, where the retrospective exhibition currently at the DIA was first shown, at the Serpentine Galleries. The Serpentine organized and launched this comprehensive and astounding look at the influential Ghanaian-born photographer’s long career documenting Ghana’s social and cultural history.

Barnor seemed destined to be a photographer. His family included many photographers, and he apprenticed under his cousin J. P. D. Dodoo before opening his own studio, called Ever Young, in Ghana’s capital the early 1950s. Ever Young was located in the Jamestown area of Accra, a busy and lively neighborhood, and Barnor found himself in the center of Ghana’s movement demanding independence from centuries of British rule. He described Ever Young as a community center, a hive of activity for people of all ages.

‘My studio was at a spot where everything happened in Accra, where young and old people met from various backgrounds, free to talk about everything and anything.’ —James Barnor

His studio work was mostly portraiture, but Barnor often took to the streets for candid shots, especially for his assignments for Ghana’s Daily Graphic newspaper. His knack for capturing a whole story in a single image led him to documenting much of the turmoil, historic moments, and key players in the lead-up to Ghana’s independence in 1957, when the country broke from the U.K. and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was elected as its first prime minister. The dynamism and passion of that time shines through in Barnor’s images, throughout the DIA’s galleries.

After one of his photographs was published in the Telegraph, Barnor was commissioned by U.K.-based Black Star Picture Agency and Drum magazine, a prominent publication that focused on the cultural and political developments of Africa and its diaspora. to photograph this time of significant historic transformation for a new nation, and the celebrations that drew people from all over the world.

‘I was the first newspaper photographer in Ghana, and I’m proud of that. Newspaper photography changed people’s lives and it changed journalism in Ghana. I was part of this moment.’  —James Barnor

Barnor moved to London to document the swinging Sixties there, and his images of the Black diaspora in the U.K. contributed significantly to that community and the larger culture. He continued to work for Drum, capturing street scenes, photographing a young Muhammad Ali before a fight, and shooting models of African descent including Erlin Ibreck and Marie Hallowi who were featured on Drum’s cover. Drum gave him a livelihood and a chance to create great images (which can be found in the DIA galleries) at a time when a Black photographer in the U.K. was not allowed much access to anything other than odd jobs.

‘You couldn’t get work in the 1960s as a Black photographer. It wouldn’t happen that a Black photographer would instruct white sitters [...] If you worked for a studio in London, you worked behind the scenes in the darkroom doing odd jobs. Drum though, where I did freelance work, was different. They let me photograph the cover girls, Muhammad Ali, Mike Eghan (the BBC presenter). Drum was my home in London, my office, I got everything done there.’ —James Barnor

In recent years, Barnor's work has received increased recognition and attention from the art world. His photographs have been exhibited internationally, including at the Serpentine Galleries in London where the exhibition originated. The DIA’s hosting of this retrospective marks Barnor’s first in the U.S. His work speaks to the power of photography as a storytelling medium, cultural preservation, and historical documentation. Through his lens, he captures the beauty, resilience, and diversity of African and diasporic communities, leaving a lasting impact on the world of photography. His work is widely known, but in small circles, and deserves a larger audience. The DIA is honored to be part of creating a wider audience for this remarkable artist.

While Barnor couldn’t be at the exhibition’s opening last month, he recorded this video to speak about some of his favorite images and his hope that visitors and staff come to know and enjoy his work.

Many thanks to Serpentine Galleries for the quotes and references in this post.

In the 2006 exhibition catalog Snap Judgements: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography, the late Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor wrote that the act of photographing Africa has been fraught with conflict, particularly “between how Africans see their world and how others see that world…[representing a] clash of lenses…one intensely absorbed in its social and cultural world, [and] the other passing through it.” Who’s photographing who and why? It is a critically important question in the world of photography, particularly when photographers as storytellers shape narratives around culture, history, and those who take part in it and when the narratives are created and promoted by outsiders. Prior to independence from colonial rule in countries throughout Africa (Ghana was the first African country to gain independence from British rule in 1957), representations of Africans as seen in magazines, newspapers, and other publications were largely made by white photographers for American and European audiences. But as photographic practice grew, particularly in West Africa, Black photographers got behind the camera to photograph their people and tell their stories for themselves and for the world.

While traveling to Paris for an art fair in 2007, I saw the work of Ghanaian photographer James Barnor (born 1929) for the first time—a stunning, larger-than-life color print of Nigerian model Marie Halowi, who he had photographed in the 1960s for the South African magazine Drum. It wasn’t until 2019 that I had the good fortune to meet James in person with my DIA colleague and Curator of African Art Dr. Nii Quarcoopome who provided an introduction. We spent an afternoon looking through flat files filled with Barnor’s photographs that are housed at his archive in the Paris office of Galerie Cleméntine de la Féronnière. I learned that day what a remarkable artist and human being James Barnor was, and continues to be, as he shared stories about his life, work, friends, family, and historical figures he photographed during his decades-long career in his homeland of Accra, Ghana, as well as in the UK—primarily London, where he lived from 1959–69.

Barnor’s career began in the late 1940s when he apprenticed for his cousin, the photographer J.P. Dodoo. In 1952, he branched out into photojournalism when he received an offer to work for The Daily Graphic Ghana’s daily newspaper. Barnor witnessed firsthand as a photographer, the events and people that marked everyday life in Accra as well as those who fought for and eventually achieved independence from British rule in 1957. In the early 1950s, he struck out on his own as a portrait photographer and established the Ever Young studio in 1953. After moving to London in 1959, Barnor attended Medway College of Art and worked regularly for the African magazines Drum and Flamingo where his photographs appeared on their covers and in feature stories showing the lifestyles, fashion, and beauty of young women from the African diaspora. Eventually, he learned color photographic processes which, in 1969, he brought back to Accra when he returned to his homeland where Barnor ran a color lab until 1973. He continued with portrait work and commercial assignments until about 1980, when turned his attention to promoting and supporting Ghanaian musical performers.

The DIA is pleased to present the first major retrospective of James Barnor’s photography in the US. Organized by the Serpentine Galleries, London, the exhibition includes over 150 black-and-white and color photographs from his archive of over 32,000 images, taken from 1950 through 1980. The exhibition opens a window for visitors to witness Barnor’s life and work, and the beauty, history, and vibrancy of the world as seen through his eyes.

• Nancy Barr, James Pearson Duffy Curator of Photography at the DIA

Explore the exhibition