Century-old family photo studio preserves Ghana’s history in black and white

Aug 31 (Reuters) – A era earlier than the Gold Coast grew to become Ghana, native photographer J.Okay. Bruce-Vanderpuije opened a small studio within the then-colonial capital Accra, the place his household would change into the de facto visible historians of a nation that had not but been born.

For 100 years, three generations of Bruce-Vanderpuijes have painstakingly amassed the world’s largest assortment of twentieth century Ghanaian images beneath one roof. They consider their Deo Gratias photograph studio is the oldest in West Africa.

From glass plates to digital recordsdata of nation-shaping occasions to intimate private portraits, the household’s 50,000-image archive gives a novel glimpse into Accra’s transition from a colonial port right into a bustling fashionable metropolis.

“The story they inform is that of [Ghana’s] historical past,” mentioned Kate Tamakloe, Bruce-Vanderpuije’s granddaughter and keeper of the fashionable archive. “And not using a historical past you don’t have any future.”

Just about unchanged since opening in 1922, Deo Gratias sits on a busy avenue within the coronary heart of Jamestown, the capital’s oldest district. Grainy archive photographs reveal the world was as soon as a lot quieter, earlier than site visitors and billboards clogged the streets.

Right now, the faces of native households, in addition to well-known musicians, politicians and patrons adorn the studio’s partitions. A black-and-white photograph of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first chief on gaining independence in 1957, hangs close to others of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and disgraced American president Richard Nixon.

“Footage communicate tonnes, louder than what has been written,” mentioned Daniel Tetteh, a Ghanaian historian who volunteers with Deo Gratias as an archivist. “If we do not protect them, it signifies that the nation will lose its reminiscence.”

Tamakloe took over Deo Gratias when her father Isaac Bruce-Vanderpuije, a lifelong photographer who inherited the studio from his father J.Okay., started to lose his eyesight. What started as a mission to digitise the archive has since change into a full-time job, one she hopes to go onto the subsequent era when the time comes.

Seated in a lush backyard outdoors the capital, Kate and Isaac flipped via an album of their favorite prints. One confirmed J.Okay. elegantly perched atop a race horse. One other confirmed a younger and beaming Isaac aiming his digicam in direction of an unknown topic.

“One should really feel proud that for 100 years one thing has been preserved, and the approaching era will see what’s occurred,” he mentioned, gripping his cane whereas Kate appeared on with a smile. “And I believe that’s not the top.”

Enhancing by Alessandra Prentice and Alexandra Hudson

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