Lucky Jim : James Barnor

Seven years after James Barnor's last exhibition at the gallery, the photographer, now 97, continues to surprise us.

This new chapter drawn from his archive presents a set of previously unseen prints, centred on the question of the self-portrait and his own staging. His journey, from pre-independence Ghana to the United Kingdom and back, is punctuated by images that have become iconic. From the classic studio portraits of the 1950s, the photographer's personality and mischief were already apparent. The closeness and ease of the press pictures from independence in 1957, and then the fashion-tinged images of the 1960s, hinted at his engaging personality. The photographs of the diaspora in Britain, meanwhile, bear witness to great moments of friendship the photographer lived through, those encounters that changed his life. Finally, on his return to Ghana in the early 1970s, he excelled at staging, whether having an assistant pose with developing-chemical drums in place of a colour chart, or the series used to illustrate the Agip brand's calendar for 1974.

In this exhibition, it is thus James Barnor whom we find in the images that bear witness to his life: a young father standing tall on his legs, posing with his first son in a christening gown in the courtyard of his studio in Ghana; him again, wearing his kente in front of an "England" road sign, captured by his great friend Dennis Kemp; him once more, in the 1950s, in a striped suit, capturing an event. More than winks, these images seem to be the soul of the archive, unearthed today in the light of his life.

The archive of James Barnor, which was catalogued and recorded with James Barnor at the gallery between 2017 and 2021, has in recent years been the fruit of numerous studies, research projects and exhibitions, which have brought his work wider public recognition.

It is a great joy to present alongside them a previously unseen instalment. On 22 October, the Fondation Cartier will open the exhibition Le temps des récoltes, by Ibrahim Mahama.