Urban Traces
KWASI DARKO
Photography
Originally Published: 10 July 2026
The Urban Traces project emerges from a personal engagement with the photographic archive of Kojo Aniapam (1933 - 2017), whose images document Ghana’s first independence celebrations in 1957. His photographs, both self-portraits and landscapes, captured the newly built architectures of power in Accra, symbols of optimism and national identity at a defining historical moment. As the artist’s paternal grandfather, Aniapam’s archive becomes both a family inheritance and a lens through which national history and the present are reconsidered.
Placing these archival images in dialogue with contemporary photographs and interviews, the project traces how Accra’s urban landscape has transformed over time. Through photography, architectural study, and oral history, Urban Traces examines migration, access, and belonging, positioning the city as a living archive where past ideals and present realities continuously intersect.
The Creative
KWASI DARKO
Kwasi Darko is a Ghanaian photographer and multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Accra. His own lived experiences, identity and communities form the basis of his practice in themes and approach. His work endeavors to serve as a visual negotiator in its own language between these communities and the larger society. He is also the founder of Kané Studios in Accra, a creative studio focused on visual productions at the intersection of photography, design and extended realities in artistic practice and exhibition making.