Prince was wearing a red basketball jersey and clutching a bunch of gold chains when Kyle Weeks spotted him across a heaving market in Accra back in 2016. The photographer was en route to a quieter part of town but knew he couldn’t miss the opportunity to take his portrait, and Prince was happy to oblige. Surrounded by hawkers selling computer wires and sim cards, Prince started posing, relishing the moment and attention he was getting from the nearby salesmen. The image was taken on Kyle’s first trip to Ghana and ultimately would inspire his new book, Good News, a collection of photographs exploring youth, becoming and creativity in the country.
Kyle arrived in Ghana not just in the midst of a creative renaissance, but at the moment it was exploding onto the world stage. The cultural spread hasn’t stopped and today Accra is home to the largest street art festival in West Africa, Chale Wote. Galleries such as The Nubuke Foundation, ACCRA [dot] ALT and the Foundation for Contemporary Art (FCA) are rapidly gaining recognition for supporting local artists and creative communities; and the city hosts events like Surf Ghana and Skate Nation. Meanwhile, creatives from across the diaspora have been shining a spotlight on Ghana: Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa hosted the Black Star Line festival in Accra last year, while the late Virgil Abloh, who was born to Ghanaian parents in Illinois, quietly funded Accra’s Freedom Skatepark. When Stormzy had his homecoming moment at the Global Citizen Festival in 2022, he told a crowd of 20,000 people: “Ghana, my people. I’m home!”
“I found myself there at a time when it was really rapidly expanding,” Kyle says. “It was super interesting to gauge, over the seven years that I’ve been travelling there, how the creative industry really blossomed. And, from a personal perspective, seeing how the people that I formed relationships with from the beginning have managed to push their craft and gain more international exposure.” During his trips, Kyle photographed musicians like John Nii Commey Tetteh aka Tot Man, who’s recently been touted as one of Ghana’s rising musicians, and later shot him recording at the City Monstars Studio. They met in Jamestown — one of the oldest parts of Accra — and over six years have built a powerful friendship throughout which John has helped connect the photographer with local creatives and navigate the city’s streets.
Another of Kyle’s regular collaborators is Jude Lartey, who he met at the Chale Wote Festival in 2016. “I was immediately struck by their innate style — the entire crew was dripping in such authentic, unapologetic style,” Kyle says. Since then, Jude has established himself as a stylist and prominent voice within the fashion and photography scene in Ghana. “There was an incredible synergy between the three of us as we explored the city, finding more people and places to photograph.”
Soon people understood what Kyle was all about and would began approaching him for portrait sessions. Local artists, musicians, models and designers would rock up with a bag of clothes — sometimes in shopping bags with ‘Good News’ written on the side, which quickly became a working title for the project. The resulting photographs celebrate Ghanian’s “insane, unhindered sense of style,” Kyle says. “It’s something I haven’t seen anywhere else in the world.” The young people were “incredibly confident and able to just embody their style and their identity in such beautiful ways.”
This shines through in Kyle’s images: women with locs piled high on their head, tailored vintage suiting and pearl necklaces; talented Ghanaian youth in their prime. The same generation of creatives that have inspired the likes of Beyoncé — whose album Black is King was made almost entirely in collaboration with Ghanian talent — and Kendrick Lamar, who was recently shot by local talent in Accra for the cover of Citizen Magazine.
It’s always been important to Kyle to let his subjects present themselves as they see fit. “I’ve always been hyper aware of my own context as a white man in Africa making work about cultures that are not necessarily my own,” he explains. “There are certain ethical questions about making this type of work that have always been at the forefront of my practice.” As a result, Kyle will only photograph people with their full consent: “There’s always a conversation, and when making the actual images there’s a collaboration aspect to the work. I never wanted it to feel as though I’m trying to represent them in a way.”
In part, he’s inspired by post-colonial African studio portraiture — photographers, including Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta, who photographed the exuberance of youth and a new, free era. They represented Africanness in such a positive way, as Kyle explains: “There’s this feeling of empowerment that runs through their images, a reclamation of identity, which I think is really beautiful especially considering the history of representation on the continent.” The images are very staged — from the props included to the outfits and hairstyles — and have much to reveal about the culture and the individuals being photographed.
At the same time, Kyle looks to the formal approach of new objective photography born in Dusseldorf, Germany, which advocates trying to limit your own viewpoint when framing the image, letting the sitter or subject take the focus. “It might be partially my German roots, but that work just resonated with me,” says Kyle, who grew up in Namibia before later moving to South Africa with his German-American parents. “I try to not be too overpowering in the portrait process, but to really approach it very openly and create some sort of a space where each person feels comfortable to just perform for the camera as they wish,” he says.
Growing up, Kyle remembers reading only negative stories about the continent and understanding the power of photography in shaping perceptions of people and places. His overarching desire for Good News was to create “a positive, empowering book” that would shed some good news on what was happening in Ghana right now. Half the money from the sale of each print will go back to the young creatives he photographs as Kyle’s way of thanking them for their portrait and enabling them to further their craft if whatever way they see fit.
All prints are for sale at Galerie number 8 in Brussels. With each print sale 50% of proceeds goes back into the hands of the person depicted in each sold photograph. Good News is available for purchase here.
Credits
Photography Kyle Weeks