James Barnor opened his first photographic studio in Accra (Ghana) in 1949. Also active for the press, he photographed the movement that led the country to its independence in 1957. Living in Englandfrom 1959 to 1969, he documented the experience of the diaspora in the Swinging London of the sixties. He trained in color photography, then returned to Ghana in 1970 to spread the technique. From social documentary to advertising assignements to government photography in the 1980s, James Barnor has remained a tireless, never partisan witness to the movement of national history. In 2021, the Serpentine Gallery in London devoted an important retrospective to him.