Kent

The work of a Ghanaian-born photographer, who was taught at Medway College of Art, is to be preserved in a new archive collection.

James Barnor's photographs will be part of the Archive and Research Centre for Culturally Diverse Photography when it opens in 2011.

Mr Barnor photographed fashion portraits of black models as well as high-profile figures.

Medway College of Art is today part of the University for the Creative Arts.

Changing times

James Barnor was born in 1929 in Accra, the capital of Ghana. After completing an apprenticeship, he started his photographic career in 1949 with a makeshift studio in the district of Jamestown.

Barnor is now retired and lives in London

Ten years later, Mr Barnor moved to the UK to study photography at Medway College of Art.

During Mr Barnor's career, Ghana was moving towards independence and London was developing into a cosmopolitan and multicultural capital.

His pictures represent the transition of societies both in Ghana and London.

As well as doing fashion shoots, Mr Barnor captured high-profile figures such as Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of Ghana following independence, and the boxer Mohammad Ali.

'First of a kind'

In 1969, he returned to Ghana and helped to introduce colour photograph processing facilities in Accra.

The archive of James Barnor's photographs has been collated by the London-based charity Autograph ABP during a four-year project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

They will take their place in the Archive and Research Centre for Culturally Diverse Photography when it opens in 2011.

The centre is thought to be the UK's first print and digital resource for a collection of photographs documenting the emergence of post-war Britain as a multicultural society.

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