James Barnor, Past, Present, Future

One evening in 1967, James Barnor arrived in Piccadilly Circus with BBC Africa Service broadcaster Mike Eghan. Around them, London’s neon signs illuminated one of the busiest intersections in the world. Barnor positioned Eghan against this backdrop of light, movement and modernity and made a photograph that would come to define an era. Today, the image is recognised as one of the most important photographs in his archive, not only for what it depicts, but for what it represents: a moment when postwar Britain was being reshaped by new voices, new identities and new possibilities.

More than fifty years later, Barnor’s work returns to the very place where that photograph was made.

For CIRCA’s April 2021 commission, presented in partnership with Serpentine, Past, Present, Future transforms Piccadilly Lights into a conversation across generations. Bringing together three contemporary responses to Barnor’s archive by Ferdinando Verderi, Olu Michael Odukoya and Culture Art Society, the exhibition explores how photographs made in one moment continue to speak to another. The result is neither retrospective nor tribute. It is an exploration of Barnor’s archive as a living force that remains active in the cultural imagination.

Few photographers have documented social change with the sensitivity and clarity of James Barnor. Born in Accra in 1929, he established the celebrated Ever Young studio during the years leading up to Ghanaian independence, capturing a society imagining itself into being. When he moved to London in 1959, he continued this work through his photographs for Drum magazine, documenting the lives, ambitions and experiences of African and Caribbean communities in Britain. Across both cities, Barnor photographed people not as symbols of history but as participants in it. His archive records nations, communities and individuals in the process of becoming.

The exhibition begins with Past, created by Ferdinando Verderi, Creative Director of Vogue Italia. Drawing from Barnor’s London photographs of the 1960s, Verderi revisits images that continue to feel remarkably contemporary in their portrayal of style, confidence and self-fashioning. At the centre of this chapter is the 1967 portrait of Mike Eghan in Piccadilly Circus. Following a curatorial proposal by Josef O’Connor to revisit the image, Barnor remotely photographed Adwoa Aboah in the exact same location, resulting in his first-ever Vogue Italia cover. More than a recreation, the photograph demonstrates how an archive can generate new futures. A moment from 1967 becomes a new image for 2021, connecting generations through a shared space and a shared gaze.

In Present, London-based creative director Olu Michael Odukoya enters into dialogue with Barnor’s archive through sound, moving image and graphic intervention. His response explores questions of beauty, Black womanhood, colour and cultural memory, treating the archive not as a fixed historical record but as material capable of continual reinterpretation. Drawing connections between Barnor’s pioneering use of colour photography and broader histories of modernism, Odukoya proposes alternative ways of understanding the relationship between Africa and the visual culture of the twentieth century.

The exhibition concludes with Future, curated by Awa Konaté through Culture Art Society. Bringing together the work of David Nana Opoku Ansah, Silvia Rosi, Thabiso Sekgala, Adama Jalloh and Lebohang Kganye, this chapter traces Barnor’s influence across a younger generation of photographers working throughout Africa and the diaspora. Each artist engages questions that have animated Barnor’s practice for decades: migration, identity, portraiture, memory and belonging. Their inclusion reveals the archive not as an ending but as a beginning.

The title Past, Present, Future ultimately describes the condition of Barnor’s work itself. His photographs move effortlessly between all three. They preserve histories, shape contemporary conversations and continue to inspire new generations of artists. At a moment when museums, archives and institutions are reassessing how histories are told and who is included within them, Barnor’s work offers something more expansive. It reminds us that photography is not only a way of recording the world but of imagining it differently.

Presented on the screens of Piccadilly Circus, the exhibition completes an extraordinary circle. The place that once appeared in Barnor’s photographs now becomes the place from which those photographs return to the public. Yet the significance of this moment lies not in nostalgia. It lies in the recognition that the questions Barnor was exploring more than half a century ago, about identity, migration, visibility, community and possibility, remain unfinished. His archive continues to grow because the future it anticipated is still unfolding.

James Barnor is one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century, whose images chart the social, cultural and political transformations that shaped Ghana, Britain and the wider African diaspora in the decades following the Second World War. Across a career spanning more than seventy years, he has created an extraordinary body of work that captures moments of independence, migration, aspiration and self-expression with warmth, dignity and optimism.

Born in Accra in 1929, Barnor established the celebrated Ever Young Studio in the early 1950s, documenting a generation coming of age as Ghana moved towards independence. His portraits reflected a society embracing modernity and change, while his work as Ghana’s first newspaper photojournalist captured the energy and ambition of a nation in formation. After moving to London in 1959, Barnor continued photographing for Drum magazine, creating one of the most significant visual records of African and Caribbean life in post-war Britain. From fashion and music to everyday street life, his photographs offered a rare and nuanced representation of communities that were largely absent from mainstream media.

In 2021, Barnor collaborated with CIRCA and Serpentine on Past, Present, Future, a month-long public exhibition presented on Piccadilly Lights that celebrated the enduring influence of his archive across generations. Structured as a journey through time, the programme brought together a presentation of Barnor’s historic photographs edited by Vogue Italia Creative Director Ferdinando Verderi, a contemporary reimagining of the archive by Olu Michael Odukoya, and a future-facing showcase of emerging photographers from Africa and the diaspora curated by Culture Art Society. At its centre was Barnor’s first-ever Vogue Italia cover, featuring Adwoa Aboah photographed in Piccadilly Circus more than fifty years after Barnor’s iconic portrait of BBC Africa Service presenter Mike Eghan was made in the same location. Together, the project transformed Piccadilly Lights into a public celebration of Barnor’s legacy while demonstrating the continued relevance of his vision for contemporary image-makers today.

Though recognition arrived later in life, Barnor’s work is now held in major public and private collections worldwide and has been the subject of landmark exhibitions at institutions including Serpentine, Tate and Autograph. His photographs remain remarkable not only as historical documents, but as enduring celebrations of style, identity, creativity and cultural exchange. Through an unwavering belief in the potential of people and photography alike, James Barnor created an archive that continues to connect generations, continents and communities.