Busua, Through Their Eyes

Victoria Dadzie-14

Vanessa Turkson-16

Portia Awortwi-15

Christiana Ocran-16

Mavis Ansah-15

The sea at Busua carries its own temperament. Sometimes brisk and hurried, other times drawn out, folding itself gently on the sand where we spent afternoons. It was here that a group of young girls first held a camera in their hands.

Disposable film cameras, carried lightly under clear skies, followed them through the day at the beach, in the streets, and in the corners of houses.

Awkward, giddy, unsure at the start, they gradually drifted into a confidence that came from choosing who and what to frame: a father by his canoe, a cluster of friends skateboarding, a familiar fisherfolk mending nets. The girls worked with seasoned photographers Daniel Nana Kwame Sekyi Attah and Kelvin Kafui Kojo Kwawukume, who acted as supportive facilitators, devoted to making them photographers in a day. Knowingly or unknowingly, the girls carried this new role entrusted to them with weight: a responsibility to shape a portrait of a town whose story has been mercilessly marketed by everyone but its own.

From the start, it was evident that to frame their small town, the girls needed a vocabulary finely attuned to the metaphors of their lived experience. They went straight for the familiar: friends, friends of friends, Victoria’s dad, each other, and more friends. A secret ingredient that would come to characterize this remarkable collection of images.

The instant shift into image-makers and custodians of subjects that were theirs long before any lens confirmed it led us to witness something unforgettable. Images began to form in guided gestures of pointing, deciding, and composing — before they were even developed, stored in the air of Busua.

Weeks later, in Accra, Yussif Aljabaar ushered the girls into a darkroom for the first time. The chemical smell, young hands hovering over trays, the patience of waiting as film turned into image. And in that waiting, another experiment unfolded: photograms, made by pressing leaves, flowers, and stray stationery onto paper. The outlines bloomed under light, as though the girls were pulling pieces of Busua into the lab, saying, this too is ours, and it can travel back with us.

This exhibition allows young girls to look at their world and declare it significant. It is an announcement of a simple but enduring truth: Busua belongs in the archive because its daughters have placed it there.