Francis

In the field of photography, Ghanaians have a long tradition of using painted backdrops. In the 1940's, photographers broke with traditional images and designed alternatives to meet the public's taste - backdrops that depicted the modernization of Ghana, or the clients' objects of desire. Real clients are surrounded by painted backgrounds of brimming refrigerators, TV's and VCR's, airplanes, or extravagant homes. They are scenes suspended between realism and a certain kind of contemporary naivety, photographic illusions mixing desire with the artifice of well being.