JAMES BARNOR FESTIVAL

 

Coinciding with the 95th birthday of James Barnor, the James Barnor Festival took place across Ghana from May to June 2024. Conceived as a national celebration of Barnor’s life and work, the festival invited artists, curators, and creatives to engage directly with his archive and reinterpret it within the context of contemporary Ghana.

Rather than unfolding in a single venue, the festival spread across a network of art spaces, institutions, and outdoor sites. Monographic exhibitions were accompanied by concerts, screenings, discussions, workshops, and public installations, creating multiple points of entry for audiences across generations. At its core, the festival sought to open new conversations around Barnor’s legacy and to situate his work within the living, evolving visual culture of Ghana today.

One of the central exhibitions developed for the festival was Someone Somewhere Beyond: Photo Reportage from the 16 Regions, by Menenaba. Following its initial presentation during the James Barnor 95 Festival, the exhibition has continued as a touring project, travelling across six regions of Ghana between March and October 2025.


Someone Somewhere Beyond

Someone Somewhere Beyond brought together the work of 16 young documentary photographers, each representing one of Ghana’s 16 regions. The exhibition was both an homage to James Barnor and a collective portrait, shaped through lived experience and proximity by Ghana’s own contemporary image makers.

Barnor’s influence and language ran fluently through the exhibition. His lifelong commitment to photographing everyday life with dignity and care has become part of Ghana’s photographic inheritance. Many of the photographers featured grew up absorbing his visual language long before encountering his work formally. That inheritance surfaces through a shared value: attention to ordinary moments.

Across the exhibition, viewers encountered scenes that move between the intimate and the public. Women gathered in mourning at a funeral. Long bicycle journeys toward a dam under a heavy sky. A king seated in state, composed and resplendent, receiving homage. Markets, festivals, children at play. Together, the photographs formed a textured portrait of Ghana as a shared home, shaped by difference yet held together by familiarity.


The Tour and Public Programme

As the exhibition travelled, supported by the Embassy of France in Ghana, Alliance Francaise Ghana, artist Ibrahim Mahama, and attended in clusters by all 16 photographers across six cities, each stop was fashioned by its location and community, extending the project into conversation and exchange.

In Tamale, hosted at Red Clay Studios, the tour opened with an exhibition launch and an artist-curator talk, grounding the project in dialogue from the outset.

In Kumasi, at Alliance Française Kumasi, the exhibition expanded to include an archiving workshop, film screenings, and an artist talk developed in collaboration with the Manhyia Palace Museum, linking photographic practice to questions of memory and historical preservation.

In Bolgatanga, shown at the Upper East Regional Museum that also houses the Bolgatanga Craft Village, the programme focused on film screenings exploring James Barnor’s life and work, situating the exhibition within a broader visual history.

In Busua, hosted by Surf House Ghana, the project took on a pedagogical focus through a film development workshop for girls, and a follow up red room workshop for the girls at the Vibrate Film Lab in Accra.

The tour continued to Cape Coast at Alliance Française Cape Coast with an artist-curator talk, before concluding in Accra at Alliance Française Accra on October 4, 2025 with a closing ceremony.


Within the Foundation’s Work

As part of the James Barnor 95 Festival and its extended life through touring, Someone Somewhere Beyond reflects the foundation’s commitment to intergenerational exchange, education, and the continued circulation of Ghanaian photographic histories. By pairing exhibition-making with workshops, screenings, and public conversations, the project foregrounds photography as both cultural memory and living practice.

Through its movement across regions and communities, the exhibition continues the spirit of the festival itself: opening Barnor’s legacy outward, inviting new audiences in, and supporting young photographers to speak from where they stand, in their own voices, with attention to the worlds they inhabit.

 

Text by MENENABA, curator Someone Somewhere Beyond

 

 Find out more about the exhibition here.