Eric Gyamfi


Eric Gyamfi is a Ghanaian photographer, living in Accra and has held exhibitions in Mampɔn Akuapem, London, Amsterdam, Accra, Vienna, Berlin, Tamale, New York, Cape Town and Bamako.
Gyamfi’s practice moves across a range of subjects, from exploring queerness in his home country to investigating how queerness might be embedded within the photographic medium itself. His recent work turns to a variety of materials and processes—often drawing from phytochemistry and low-tech, elemental approaches—to rethink how images are formed, sensed, or registered

Early life and education

Gyamfi holds a B.A in Information studies with Economics from the University of Ghana and an MFA from the Department of painting and sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Gyamfi was also a fellow at the Photographers’ Master Class,  After a brief apprenticeship with Veteran Ghanaian Photographer Francis Nii Obodai Provençal. He also participated in the Nuku Studio Photography Workshops and World Press Photo West African Master Class, both in Accra.

Life and work

The series Just Like Us documents queer individuals and communities in Ghana, "to show queer people exist and that they are like anyone else" 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." His work has been featured in A Diagnosis of Time: Unlearn What You Have Learned, Ecologies and Politics of the Living, The 11th and 12th Bamako Encounters, Fixing Shadows: Julius and I, the 74th Berlinale International Film Festival, The New York African Film Festival, Punya 2.0, Kɔηsεt Pāti and others

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • See Me See You, Nubuke Foundation, Accra, 2016/17
  • Gyamfi Just Like Us: Constellations, Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg, 2017/18
  • Fixing Shadows; Julius and I 2019
  • The Things That Are Left Hanging In The Air Like A Rumour, Center For Plant Medicine Research Mampɔn Akuapem
  • Fixing Shadows: Julius and I, Autograph ABP, London

    Group exhibitions

  • 2016, “Asylum”, Lagos Photo, Lagos, Nigeria
  • 2016, “Witches of Gambaga”, San Jose Foto Festival, San Jose, Uruguay
  • 2018, “Just Like Us; Drama Queens”, Nubuke foundation/Gallery, Accra, Ghana.
  • 2018, “Just Like Us”, Africa state of mind, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK
  • 2019, “A Certain Bed”, Foam Talent, Beaconsfield Gallery, London, UK
  • 2019, “ Just Like Us”, Africa State of Mind, Impressions Gallery, Bradford, UK
  • 2019, “A Certain Bed”, Foam Talent, The Cube, Eschborn- Frankfurt, DE
  • 2019, “Fixing Shadows: Julius and I”, 12th Bamako encounters, bamako, ML
  • 2020, “Just Like Us”, African Cosmologies; Photography, Time and the Other, fotoFest Biennale, Texas, USA
  • 2021, “Trade winds and Shadow objects; North by South East”, A Diagnosis of Time; Unlearn What You Have Learned, Redclay Studio, Tamale, GH
  • 2022, “Teak Atlas: From Where do we begin” Tracing Emerging Ecologies, Tamale
  • 2022, “TeakAtlas: FromWheredowebegin”ADifferentNowIsCloseEnoughToExhaleOnYou, Capetown, SA
  • 2023, “What’chu Looking at? Who you Speaking with?”: A Gazing all round, Valleta, Malta
  • 2023, “Teak Atlas: From where do we begin” Ecologies of Elsewhere, Contemporary art Center, Cincinnati, US
  • 2023, “Teak Atlas: From Where Do we Begin”, Worldmaking, Mitchelle-Innes & Nash Gallery, New York, USA
  • 2023, “Certain Winds From The South”, African Film Festival, New York, USA
  • 2023, “Certain Winds From The South”, Nuku Studio, Tamale GH
  • 2023, “Certain Winds From the South” Savannah Center for Contemporary Art, Tamale, GH
  • 2023, “Teak Atlas: The Situation in Ljubljana”, 35th Ljubljana Biennale for Graphic Arts, Ljubljan
  • 2024, “Certain Winds From The South”, Pa Gya literary Festival, FCA, Accra, GH
  • 2024, “Certain Winds From The South”, New York African Film Festival, New York, USA
  • 2024, “ Wandering through Bern on a new day” Punya 2.0, Kunsthallbern, Switzerland, CH
  • 2024, “Certain Winds From The South”, 74 Berlinale, Forum Expanded, Germany, DE
  • 2025, “Certain Winds From The South, “Kɔηsεt Pāti” Accra, GH

    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''