PHOTOGRAPHER

(Grand Bassam - Ivory Coast)

born in 1908 (Ghana) - died in 1994 (Grand Bassam -Ivory Coast)

Daniel Attoumou Amicchia is active in Grand Bassam from 1948 to 1970.

Amicchia is initiated by his older brother to photography in the 1920s.

In 1948, he moved to Grand-Bassam, keeping close ties with the Anglophone community from Ghana, attached to the local English syndicate.

These English-speaking Ghanaians still keep facing the camera a very straight posture, hands on knees, feet flat on the ground, with their loincloth motifs which have special meaning (belonging to a family, a clan, a corporation) as seen in Amicchia photographs.

He enjoys photography as a 'street photographer' and photographs mostly family and various corporations of the Grand-Bassam society in natural light portraits.

After cancer, Daniel Attoumo Amicchia goes out of photography business. He died in Grand-Bassam at the age of 86.

His family threw all his photographs and equipment to the sea. A few prints survived by a collector, his former partner, Joseph Ernest Kouao, and other rare photographs preserved in family albums.

We discover his work with the Revue Noire magazine RN02 on Abidjan (September 1991) with no more informations about his life and his work.

[run the slideshow below]