Meet Prince Gyasi, A Ghanaian Photographer Who Uses An iPhone To Capture Colourful Images Of Accra.
Using just his iPhone, visual artist Prince Gyasi has created incredible images that reimagine his home city of Accra, Ghana.
Occasionally using digital manipulation, he captures his subjects posed against colourful textured backgrounds and alongside the ocean, corrugated steel huts, and sunsets; Gyasi’s frames embrace bright contrasts between his subjects’ skin, dress, and surroundings.
Fruits, umbrellas, and significant fashion statements provide additional palettes and offer insight into Gyasi’s landscape and community; his hues are as rich as the lives he depicts. With this aesthetic, the artist challenges idealised beauty standards and the conventions of traditional fine-art photography.
The 26-year-old Ghanaian visual artist straddles a line between artistic styles, making him hard to label. Clashing, vibrant colours create fantastical worlds of everyday scenes in Gyasi’s work, bringing to life an alternative vision of Accra, his home city. His mother would take him fabric shopping at Makola Market when he was young. But on the way, he spotted a photographer’s small studio. It was here he sought to learn all he could about the skill.
Prince began experimenting with photography in high school, capturing photos of the world around him using his cellphone. Since then, he has purposefully continued to create with his phone, saying, “the norm is not for everyone. I’m different, and I’m stubborn. I like to challenge myself to do the same thing that traditional photographers use just my phone”.
“When I started, I couldn’t afford a camera, so I used what I had,” said Gyasi.
Prince Gyasi began taking photos with a disposable camera as a child before getting his first smartphone, a Blackberry, in high school – and finally, saving up enough to get an iPhone in 2012.
Gyasi’s swift rise to fame is more impressive given the camera that launched his career: an iPhone.
Gyasi is also the co-founder of the nonprofit BoxedKids, which helps educate underprivileged youth in Accra. BoxedKids, a non-profit community, is Gyasi’s biggest passion and gives most of his earnings to help kids in Jamestown get a quality education.
Besides the BBC, Prince Gyasi has also been featured on Okay Africa, Afro-Punk, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Ignant and Nowness.