Felicia Ansah Abban

Self portrait IV, Felicia Ansah Abban. Document Journal.

Felicia Ansah Abban is known as the first professional photographer in Ghana, a significant feat when considering the history of photography in Africa and its limited lack of Black women artists wielding the camera. Abban's significant contributions documented the revolutionary 1960’s Ghana from its stylish female locals to the first president himself, Kwame Nkrumah.

Self portrait X, Felicia Ansah Abban, image on display at ANO Institute in Accra, 2017, Contemporary And.

The eldest of six children, Abban was born in 1935 in Sekondi-Takoradi-- a port city on the Gulf of Guinea, south Ghana. At age fourteen, she was an apprentice for her father, Joseph Emmanuel Ansah in his photography studio. Eventually, she married textile designer Robert Abban and would open up her own space in the Jamestown part of Accra, Ghana called "Mrs. Felicia Abban's Day and Night Quality Art Studio."

Abban's self-portraits have a classic finesse, a timeless elegance of a woman breaking barriers under the guise of fashion conscious icon (or is it not a guise at all just an additional element to a phenomenal persona). The voluptuously shaped, stylish woman constantly readies up for a party or special occasion, looking her absolute best in patterned/laced clothes and strategically placed jewelry. Often, she as the subject, focuses away from the viewer either smiling brightly or expressing a subdued intelligence, no camera in sight, no “this is a photographer” label to stitch.

These self-portraits become more than beautiful lady pictures. These are powerful arsenals symbolizing a woman’s role in the art world— as an artist that values and knows her subject well, especially strengthening is that Abban is a Ghanian making this huge, pivotal statement.

Whereas Abban's women sitters are constantly looking out at the viewer, gazes noticeably defiant, touches of regal prestige in their upright postures. Their sophisticated embellishments on clothing, atop their heads, on wrists, necks, ears, and fingers draw attention to status, their being immortalized by camera another added level to pedigree— another woman’s camera at that.

Abban manages to show respect and appreciation for a people that wear their awareness and hindsight like a second skin, as form fitting and unique as the country they proudly occupy.

In addition to photographing subjects, Abban was also teaching young girls the trade, photography as activism, a way for women to see themselves in the hands of other women. After all, men still dominate the field, especially in Africa, in Ghana. Artistic practices have expense and photography has to be one of the most lucrative— the camera alone carries the burden of price. Yet by nurturing young girls into the photography field— utilizing the very tool that once and still is Other-ing them— gives them the opportunity to take control of images of themselves and the world, documenting their people as Abban herself had done in her time.

Recently, curator Nana Oforiatta Ayim included Abban's work (mostly her women subjects and self-portraits) into the first Ghana Pavilion of the 58th Venice Bienale, 2019.

Ayim said, "[Abban] thought she could portray women better than men. She was the only female in a male dominated field; the only official female photographer of our president. So much of her focus is on female subjects and her self portraits."

Accra: Portraits of a City, 4th March 2017-1st April 2017, ANO, Osu., Laurian R. Bowles, 2015.

Abban has since retired due to the plights of arthritis. However, her former studio is in the works of becoming a museum with Ayim leading the way into ensuring that the world knows Abban's profound legacy (Ayim is writing a book on Abban as well).