As Africa has always been narrated by outsiders, Ghanaian photographer Paul Ninson brings the continent’s visual history back home to start an inside narrative
The Dikan Center: a gift by Paul Ninson to the people
In December 2022, Africa’s biggest photography library opened in Accra, Ghana’s capital, on the initiative of Ghanaian photographer and film-maker Paul Ninson. The library is part of the Dikan Center, a non-profit organization committed to visual education and visual storytelling in Africa.
Mr. Ninson’s goals are to give a voice to African people and to help local aspiring photographers develop their careers without the need to fight with obstacles he had to face himself: «There are a lot of people in Ghana who are desperate to be photographers, to tell the stories of Africa. These books are going to be the backbone».
Paul Ninson: photojournalism in Africa
Mr. Ninson became a photographer five years ago out of need other than passion. He had a daughter at a young age and decided to teach himself photography to support her. As an autodidact, back then he found himself looking for photography books, only to realize that it was difficult to find one in Ghana. Moreover, while studying Mr. Ninson noticed that most photojournalism in Africa was done by foreign photographers – Africa was being narrated by outsiders and local people were lacking a voice. This made Mr. Ninson frustrated and willing to promote a change. A change that he thought could occur also through photography, which he still regards as not only a medium of expression, but a way to solve problems.
International Center of Photography in New York: Paul Ninson
In 2019, Mr. Ninson won a scholarship and was given the opportunity to study at the School of the International Center of Photography in New York for a year. Thus, he moved to the United States and started what began as a hobby, but rapidly evolved into a life mission – collecting photography books to bring back to Ghana, so that local photographers had something to study on.
«I felt privileged to have had the opportunity to go to New York and to study there, so I decided I would come back to Ghana and share such privilege with my people. I started buying African photo books with the idea of sharing them with young photographers back home, but as my collection grew, it dawned on me that I could create a library dedicated to photography and visual education, so I started reaching out to booksellers for donations and I also received donations from private galleries and collectors».
Brandon Stanton: Humans of New York
When in 2020 the pandemic locked everything and everyone down, Mr. Ninson was still in New York and, as the bookshops offloaded their inventories at reduced rates, he managed to increase his collection. After the lockdown, he began to travel around the country in search of new acquisitions and even took out personal loans to cover the costs. With up to thirty thousand books on Africa and on the African diaspora, Mr. Ninson built up the world’s largest collection of books with images taken in Africa or by photographers of African descent. His collection includes every issue of National Geographic from the last forty years, as well as films and other books on photography and Africa in general.
Still, in 2021 Mr. Ninson was missing the funds necessary to finance the opening of a library. And it was then that American writer and photographer Brandon Stanton came to his aid and promoted crowdfunding on his blog Humans of New York. The campaign was a success, with one million dollars raised in only one day.
Dikan: a name, a mission
Mr. Ninson decided to name his photography library Dikan Center, as dikan in Asante – the local language in Ghana – means take the lead. According to him, when starting the Dikan Center, he took the lead and now he wants to encourage and inspire other people in Africa, Black people, to take the lead as well: «I am a photographer, an African and a Black person myself; I am an insider. I basically built a place where I would have been a few years ago».
Mr. Ninson believes that knowing one’s history and understanding one’s identity is mandatory to progress. Thus, he created a place where the local population could be educated in narrative in order to be able to build their own narrative: «My goal here is to solve the problems of Africa, problems of accessibility, of visual culture, of job creation and other things. To do so I have to train people in ethics, leadership and all that. And I think one of the solutions for the problems of Africa is to use visual education to empower people».
«We are Africa’s curator»
It is a common mistake to separate economics from narrative, whereas narrative is responsible, for example, for people choosing to invest or not to invest in Africa. This is why he wants to train African people to tell their own stories and to provide them with the tools necessary to construct such narratives on their own and to distribute them. Not just good stories, but also bad ones, if they are needed to solve problems. Such a mission is summarized on the Dikan Center’s website in the slogan «We are Africa’s curator».
And this is also what Mr. Ninson himself does with his personal photographic projects. For example, in Umoja Women – Village with No Men he documented an all-female matriarch village located in Kenya, whose members are engaged in the fight for girls and women rights. The village has become a sanctuary for survivors of violence against women and for young girls fleeing forced marriages, genital mutilation and abuse.
The Dikan library: a bridge between inside and outside narrations of Africa
Flipping through the pages of the photography books and magazines on Africa he collected, Mr. Ninson admired the pictures displayed in them, but could not avoid wondering whether the people depicted in them had contributed to the stories they were narrating, whether those communities would have agreed with the way they had been represented.
He believes that the inside and the outside perspectives will always be different, because when you see something as yours and you care for it, your approach towards that thing will inevitably be different from someone who looks at it from a detached point of view. Therefore, his mission is to enable African people to tell their own story, to be at the same time authors and narrators of their story.
No barriers in gender, in race, in terms of education
Mr. Ninson does not intend the Dikan Center as a place for Black and African people only: «Here everyone is welcome. I believe that there should not exist any barriers in gender, in race, in terms of education».
On the contrary, he also wishes with the Dikan Center to be able to create links with the rest of the world and to cooperate with foreign subjects in order to bring back to Africa its visual history. Indeed, just as the tens of thousands of books he collected in the United States, most of African visual history is located abroad, especially in the Western part of the world. This means that it is not accessible for the locals, even though they are the protagonists of those stories: «I am looking for different perspectives on Africa from all around the world, because I think that if all the perspectives were on the table, it would be better for all of us. So, let’s all share what we have and build bridges».
Mr. Ninson’s desire for dialogue and inclusion expresses itself in the compresence, within the library, of two different sections: Black Africa and other topics. The first section, which represents the majority of the collection, includes names such as Gordon Parks, who was the first African American photographer to become part of Life’s staff; Ghanaian photographer James Barnor, who founded the first color processing laboratory in Ghana; Malian portraitists Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé.
The library also comprehends some rare books, such as one dated 1852 and signed by Stephen Hill, who was governor of the Gold Coast, as Ghana was known before independence.
Non-profit visual education for African people
Since Mr. Ninson is also a film-maker and since his goal is to promote an all-around visual education for his people, the Dikan Center is not limited to photography: «My goal is not just the books, my goal is the impact. My goal has always been to use books and any other form of visual education to have a concrete and positive impact on people’s life».
The center, which under the architectural point of view is the result of an adaptive reuse, also features an art gallery, photo and production studios, a story lab and classrooms, which are all open to the public in order to foster the talent of African visual artists: «At present, the visual and educational ecosystem in Africa is still underdeveloped, we lack a lot of necessary infrastructures. So, my goal is to build those infrastructures and to develop an ecosystem that could prevent young people from being forced to leave the continent to get an education, like I was».
The Dikan Gallery hosts temporary exhibitions of works of Africa and the diaspora, combining the presentation of new work with the rediscovery and reassessment of work by established voices. It was inaugurated with Ahennie, a show featuring the documentary photography of the late Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Bobbie – also known as Bob Pixel – and of Mr. Ninson himself.
Dikan Center
The Dikan Center, HR3J+GP2, Third Kaadjano St, Accra, Ghana. A non-profit organization committed to visual education and visual storytelling in Africa, founded by Ghanaian photographer and film-maker Paul Ninson. The center includes Africa’s biggest photography library, an art gallery for temporary exhibitions, photo and production studios, a story lab and classrooms, which are all open to the public.
