Eric Gyamfi (born 1990) is a Ghanaian photographer, living in Accra, who has made work about queer lives there. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Nubuke Foundation in Accra and the Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg. In 2019, he won the Foam Paul Huf Award.
Early life and education
Gyamfi was born in Bekwai, Ghana. He has a BA in information studies and economics from the University of Ghana (2010–2014). Since 2018, he has been studying for an MFA at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi.
Life and work
Gyamfi lives and works in Accra, Ghana.
The series Just Like Us documents queer individuals and communities in Ghana, "to show queer people exist and that they are like anyone else". In Ghana, queer people are discriminated against, othered and same-sex sexual activity is illegal. Made in black and white, the photographs as described by Ekow Eshun in The Guardian, are an intimate evocation of everyday life, titled with studied plainness: Ama and Shana at lunch; Kwasi at Kokrobite beach; Atsu during dance; Kwasi in bed. When queerness is regarded as the opposite of normality, the answer, suggests Gyamfi, is to insist on the very ordinariness of the people being documented and in so doing declare them as individually complex as everyone else."
A series of self-portraits, Asylum, explores African male sexuality against a backdrop of religion and tradition.
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
See Me See You, Nubuke Foundation, Accra, 2016/17
Gyamfi Just Like Us: Constellations, Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg, 2017/18
Group exhibitions
"What'chu Looking at? Who you Speaking with?", Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta, Malta, 2023
Awards
2016: Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund grant, Magnum Photos for See You See Me
2019: Foam Paul Huf Award from Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, a £20,000 award, for all his work to date, including Fixing Shadows; Julius and I
References
External links
"Eric Gyamfi, Just Like Us" (video)