Issue 252: “Accra”

“Accra,” guest edited by the New York–based artist Lyle Ashton Harris and the Accra-based photographer and educator Nii Obodai, considers the Ghanaian capital as a site of dynamic photographic voices and histories that connect visual culture in West Africa to the world.

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In the issue:

Words
Ghana Becomes You
“Zohra Opoku’s evocative reflections on mortality and resilience”
A Conversation with Ekow Eshun

Image Bank
“The archives illuminating a nation’s past”
Kobby Ankomah Graham

Ghana Obscura
“For artists and writers, the return to a land where history was made”
Anakwa Dwamena

The Correspondent 
“How Gerald Annan-Forson documented Ghana’s postindependence transformations”
Jesse Weaver Shipley

Why We Went Out
“The elusive spaces for queer expression”
Chiké Frankie Edozien

A Library for the Future
“How Paul Ninson built a center for photobooks”
Ama Benewaa Tawiah

The Door of Memory
“John Akomfrah on telling stories about migration and belonging”
A Conversation with Vanessa Peterson and Lyle Ashton Harris

Pictures
The Society
“A portrait of Accra’s leadership by Lyle Ashton Harris”
Senam Okudzeto

Postbox Ghana
“Rediscovering architectural heritage through picture postcards”
Kuukuwa O. Manful

Sunday Special
“Carlos Idun-Tawiah’s retro-inspired views of youth and style”
Nana Oforiatta Ayim

Early Risers
“For Kay Kwabia, the poetry of everyday scenes”
Lovia Gyarkye

Beauty Lives in Nima
“Fibi Afloe highlights the graceful fashion in one Accra neighborhood”
Amy Sall

Makola’s Market Queens
“Misper Apawu’s portraits of traders and sellers”
Nana Ama Agyemang Asante

Double Double
“Lloyd Foster’s kinetic photo-sculptures”
Nicole Acheampong

Back
The PhotoBook Review
A conversation with the publisher Stanley/Barker, Salamishah Tillet on the history of Black studio photographers, and reviews of photobooks by Nico Krijno, Matthias Brunner, Masahisa Fukase, B. Ingrid Olson, and Kenta Nakamura

Endnote
Six questions for Kwame Anthony Appiah

Plus— exhibition previews from Alfredo Boulton, A Window Suddenly Opens, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Immersion; Elizabeth A. Kessler on how the James Webb Space Telescope envisions the cosmos; Kim Bell on the afterlife of a nineteenth-century assassin; Tin Htet Paing on the artists working under Myanmar’s oppressive military regime; and Mimi Plumb on the Clash, Larry Sultan, and the Mission District in San Francisco.

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Support has been provided by members of Aperture’s Magazine Council: Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, Susan and Thomas Dunn, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, and Michael W. Sonnenfeldt, MUUS Collection.