Accra (Aperture 252)

This fall, following acclaimed issues centered on Delhi, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and São Paulo, Aperture magazine presents “Accra,” an edition that considers the Ghanaian capital as a site of dynamic photographic voices and histories that connect visual culture in West Africa to the world. “Accra” is guest edited by the New York–based artist Lyle Ashton Harris and the Accra-based photographer and educator Nii Obodai.

“This issue lays bare the current complexities around representation, not only through photography but also film, architecture, and spaces for gathering,” says Harris, who lived in Accra and taught at New York University’s Ghana campus for seven years. “What does it mean to bring a multiplicity of identities into one sphere? In what ways do conflicting ideas rub up against each other?”

Ghana has been a home for compelling photography since the late nineteenth century, from the output of the hundred-year-old Deo Gratias photo studio to the stylish midcentury visions of James Barnor. Aperture Issue #252 “Accra” features exclusive interviews with Zohra Opoku, whose textile-based works evoke mortality and resilience, and John Akomfrah, the celebrated filmmaker who throughout his career has dramatized ideas about heritage and belonging between Ghana and the UK, and who will represent Britain in the 2024 Venice Biennale. Photographs by the cover artist Carlos Idun-Tawiah, whose work is featured in a portfolio, will be presented by Aperture at the Armory Show in New York, September 7–10.

“Photography is a potent medium for situating history,” says Obodai. “Accra” looks both to the archives that catalog Ghana’s past—and the country’s central role in Pan-African thought and political activism—and to the visions of a new generation.