When I walked into the coffee shop in Dzorwulu where I love to conduct my interviews, Paul Addo was already seated. He was editing a batch of photos taken from a trip to a mango farm in the outskirts of Accra.
The smoothie on his table was almost to the base, the meat pie gone, leaving the crumbs to serve as evidence. We shook hands, I pulled a chair and sat down. The meeting was our first and was looking forward to our meeting. It was going to be the first time I was meeting him, though we are friends on Facebook.
From Villaggio apartments to ordinary huts outside of Accra, Paul’s lenses serve as a guide into the everyday living of people and their environment. I am an admirer of his works and have been waiting for us to meet and talk.
I wanted to pick his brain on the job and what lessons I could pick from him. Paul is a man of few words. He is shy but clever, as I was later to learn. He allows his works to speak for him while he jots the feedback in his memory. On the piece of paper next to him, he had written down the serial numbers of the photos on the editing bench and once he was done selecting, he crossed them out.
Mentorship
“I learnt this from Yaw Pare,” he told me. Yaw Pare is a celebrated Ghanaian photographer and traveller, whose captivating images are national treasure. The relationship between Paul and Yaw started from an image Yaw posted on his Facebook page.
“They were photos from a particular area in Ghana (scenery). At the time, I knew there were photographers in Ghana, but I didn’t know of anyone who captured landscape pictures,” he said. He then reached out to Yaw Pare and requested to meet him. Yaw agreed and they set up a date to meet, at a wedding event he was shooting.
“After his shoot I went home with him and when I was about leaving, he handed me a canon 600d and 18-55mm kit lens. I kept following him to shoot and he became my mentor. That’s how everything started.”
Venturing out on his own
After three years of apprenticeship and having picked up valuable career changing tips from Yaw, Paul took off to be on his own. Thankfully, he got the required blessings; and for the past four years, has built a portfolio that focuses on a narrative-driven visual storytelling.
Legacy
While maintaining the focus on capturing people and places, Paul is redirecting his lenses to highlight some of Ghana’s beautiful landscapes, the people and their culture. He recently visited some communities in the Volta Region and walked away with some hidden treasures.
He has also been nursing the ambition of sprinkling the lenses’ dust into other countries on the African continent.
“That’s what I want to be known for while the photography industry on this side of the world is being appreciated and understood well. So photographers will not only be paid well for their creative works, but also their work seen as a passing moment that when not photographed, its prove of existence is wiped out totally or there will be nothing to show this particular thing happened some days, months, years, decades or centuries ago.”
Industry in focus
Ghana’s photography industry is blessed with so many talents whose works have become reference points for global tourists and investors. Bob Pixel of blessed memory, a man so blessed with the gift of using photography to bring light and life to what some may consider ordinary places or objects, redefined the country’s beauty through his lenses. Paul is hopeful the body of works by those who have been in the industry before he joined continue to inspire others to become photographers.
“In Ghana, photographers like Bob Pixel of blessed memory, my own mentor Yaw Pare, and Steve Ababio – for me – have really shaped the industry in terms popularity; and photographing what was not really photographed here in Ghana (nature, scenery, festivals, etc.) has really changed how Ghanaians see and think of photography. The future of photography in Ghana is very big, thanks to people like them.”
His roots and upbringing
Paul comes from a small village in the Central Region. Abuenu, a farming community in the Abura Asebu Kwamankese District, is where he was born. The third born from seven children, he studied Business at the Fanti Nyankomase Ahenkro Secondary School in Fanti Nyankomase in the Assin South District, Central Region. He had wanted to pursue a course that may have later helped him become a banker, but he was rather offered a General Arts programme which he abandoned for the business course.
“I completed JSS in 2005 and if my memory serves me correctly, we were the first computer selection batch. Computer placed me at Nyankomase Ahenkro Secondary School, the course next to my name was General Art. I ran out of the General Art class in first year to Business class because when we were told of our electives, Accounting wasn’t part; so I was like ‘How can I work at the bank if I don’t do Accounting?’ I sneaked out quietly to Business class 1D.”
After Senior High School, his ambition was to pursue a programme at the tertiary level. But having witness the financial struggle of his parents to even see him through SHS, he gave up the thought of pursuing further studies at the tertiary level.
“My parents are small-scale farmers with cassava and maize being their main crop. Our farm yielded very well but farm produce was very cheap. A huge sack of cassava cost nothing and if you look at the job that went into planting cassava, it was not worth it. Even when you were harvesting, you would have to cut cassava stems on say a half plot of land before you could get a sack of cassava, plus buyers wanted to fill the sack to the brim. It was a cheat for farmers and it did not help them financially, but neither did it stop them from farming.”
Changing scenes – Mankessim to Accra
In the face of this financial difficulties, Paul explained he hatched a plan to move to Accra to hustle. And to begin with, he first settled at Mankessim, a fishing and farming community also in the Central Region, where he got a job as a teacher. He taught at a private school for three months. A cousin by name Daniel Amissah facilitated the move. Determined not to remain at Mankessim, Paul headed to Accra to stay with his sister, Agnes Addo – a seamstress apprentice in Mallam-Abease. He later left to look for his grandmother at Tesano. While with the grandmother, he got introduced to one George Mensah Britton, and the journey to Accra started proper.
“George happened to live in this grandmother’s house. I went to the house with him. I stayed there for close to five years with George being my big brother. George showed me the ins and outs of Accra. For GB, Accra was in his palm. He was always somewhere in the city and I was with him all the time.”
Making Accra home
Determined to make the city his new place, Paul refused to give in to the intimidation that greeted those who had already come. To overcome whatever apprehension he may have had about life in the city, he created an image about it, the people and their way of life. What he could not get over his head was the security situation. He was worried somebody may just grab him at night and mistreat him.
From an innocent boy who came to Accra with little knowledge about its people and how they operate, Paul’s works have become iconic pieces, giving Ghana a new lease of life.
