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Dikan Center

@dikancenter

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@dikanlibraries | @dikangallery @dikanahenfie @awoinstitute
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📍 Accra, Ghana

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We’re excited to announce Dikan Center (@dikancenter) as an official supporting partner for DDC26! ⚡️

Dikan Center is a cornerstone of visual education and storytelling in Africa; home to the continent’s largest photography library, world-class galleries, and dedicated research archives.

From championing visual research to preserving African culture, Dikan sets the standard for how we study, document, and elevate our creative history.

Together, we’re strengthening our shared mission: building sustainable systems, spaces, and opportunities for creatives across the continent.

🎟 Lock in your pass: link in bio.
🗓 12–14 November 2026
📍 National Theatre, Accra taken in National Theatre of Ghana by @dikancenter

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21 days ago

Yesterday at the Dikan Center in Accra, we screened The Eyes of Ghana—a film by director @bgproudfoot, executive produced by @barackobama and @michelleobama.

We were honoured to share this special cinematic experience with our community and to create space for stories that connect Ghana to the world.

To the more than 380 people who joined us, thank you for making the evening so memorable. Together, we continue to create space for Ghanaian stories to be seen, discussed, and remembered.

Many of you have asked to watch it again, while others couldn’t make it. We hear you! We’re considering another screening—stay tuned.
@theeyesofghana @breakwaterstudios studios
#Dikan #TheEyesOfGhana #GhanaianStories #AfricanCinema #FilmScreening KeepOnFilming taken in South La Estate, Accra by @dikancenter

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23 days ago

Ghana was already independent. But the man waving from this car was not yet its president. 🇬🇭 On 27 August 1959, Kwame Nkrumah returned from London to the welcome captured here. At the time, he was Ghana’s Prime Minister.

Here’s a detail worth remembering: independence and becoming a republic were two separate milestones. Ghana gained independence in 1957, with Queen Elizabeth II remaining its constitutional head of state. On 1 July 1960, Ghana became a republic, and Nkrumah became its first president. This photograph captures a moment between those two chapters.

Today, on Founder’s Day and the anniversary of his birth, we remember Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, whose vision helped shape an independent Ghana and gave voice to the possibility of a united Africa.

What is one thing about Nkrumah you wish more people learned in school?

#KwameNkrumah #GhanaHistory #FoundersDay by @dikancenter

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25 days ago

Films at Dikan

On Nkrumah’s birthday, discover the story of the man behind his camera. 🇬🇭🎬

This holiday Monday, join us at Dikan Center for The Eyes of Ghana. Follow Chris Hesse, Kwame Nkrumah’s personal cameraman, and filmmaker Anita Afonu as they work to recover and share footage of Africa’s independence era a history preserved on film for a new generation to see.

Directed by two-time Oscar winner @bgproudfoot and executive produced by @barackobama and @michelleobama .

📅 Monday, September 21 🕕 6:00–8:30 p.m. 📍 Dikan Center, Accra

Seats are very limited. Make this part of your holiday and join us for an evening with our history. No tickets— just come early to secure a seat.

@theeyesofghana @theeyesofghana
#TheEyesOfGhana #DikanCenter #KwameNkrumah #AccraEvents taken in South La Estate, Accra by @dikancenter

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a month ago

What is your portfolio saying — and is it the story you want to tell? Get a fresh perspective at Dikan Portfolio Review with Francesco Bellina @francescobellina : free, in-person, one-on-one feedback on your photography. Open to Ghanaian documentary photographers, photojournalists and portrait photographers at every career stage.

📍 Dikan Center, South La, Accra 🗓 Monday | 10am–3 pm

Limited places. Apply by Friday evening.
Submit your portfolio, a short artist bio and a brief statement about your work through the link in bio. Selected applicants will be invited to individual sessions.

What would you most like feedback on? Let us know below.
#DikanCenter #PortfolioReview #GhanaianPhotographers taken in South La Estate, Accra by @dikancenter

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a month ago

Archive Night at Dikan is a new community night for all of us.
It is a home to sit together, meet people, listen, watch, talk, remember, and learn from one another.

Every Archive Night will be different. One night may feature a film or a short presentation. Another may bring together music, photographs, books, recordings, objects, storytelling, a performance, or a DJ set. Someone may share the history of a person, place, community, or collection.

Whatever the format, the evening is about archives: what they hold, how we care for them, and the stories they help us share.
For our first Archive Night, Courage and George will give a discussion about archives. They will explore what archives are, and why they matter to our communities.

You can speak, ask questions, share what you know, or simply sit back and enjoy the evening.
Come alone or bring someone with you—a friend, a neighbour, your children, your parents, or your grandparents. You do not need to be an archivist, artist, researcher, or historian. You do not need to know anything before you arrive.
Young or old, everyone is welcome.

Come as you are. There is a place for you. taken in South La Estate, Accra by @dikancenter

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a month ago

Fifty years of African photography, from independence to 2010, gathered by thirty-four photographers: Samuel Fosso, Malick Sidibé, David Goldblatt, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Ricardo Rangel, Bob Gosani, Pierrot Men, Eileen Perrier, James Depara and others.

The title is Simon Njami’s. The dream is useful because it does work — photography in the postcolonial period was not only recording history but taking back the picturing of Africa from those who had been doing it from outside.
A Useful Dream: African Photography 1960–2010, introduction by Simon Njami, text by Frank Vanhaecke (BOZAR Expo, Brussels / Silvana Editoriale, 2010).

In the reference collection at Dikan Library and Archives, Accra.
#AUsefulDream #SimonNjami #AfricanPhotography #SamuelFosso #MalickSidibe DavidGoldblatt HistoryOfPhotography DikanLibrar taken in South La Estate, Accra by @dikancenter

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a month ago

Chief S.O. Alonge (1911–1994) was the first official photographer to the royal court of the Kingdom of Benin. He held the post for more than fifty years, recording the rituals, regalia and pageantry of the court from inside the household he was documenting — not as a visitor granted access, but as a member of it.

Published by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art with Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, @smithsonian_africanart with essays by Nigerian scholars, photographers and artists.

Amy J. Staples, Flora Edouwaye S. Kaplan and Bryna Freyer (Giles, 2017). In the reference collection at Dikan Library and Archives, Accra.

#SOAlonge #BeninKingdom #NigerianPhotography #CourtPhotography #HistoryOfAfricanPhotography DikanLibrary taken in South La Estate, Accra by @dikancenter

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a month ago

The oldest surviving daguerreotype from West Africa was made in Senegal in the 1840s. At that time the French presence was a few trading posts on the coast; local kingdoms still held the interior. The camera arrived into that world, not the colonial one that came later.

Over the next century Senegalese photographers made the medium their own. Mama Casset’s studio portraits in Dakar. Oumar Ka’s photographs of village life. Macky Kane, whose name was lost until recently. Glass painters and lithographers reworking photographs into other images entirely. Giulia Paoletti traces this history from the 1840s to independence in 1960, with many images published for the first time.

Portrait and Place: Photography in Senegal, 1840–1960, Giulia Paoletti (Princeton University Press, 2024).

In the reference collection at Dikan Library and Archives, Accra.

#PortraitAndPlace #SenegalesePhotography #MamaCasset #OumarKa #Daguerreotype HistoryOfAfricanPhotography Dakar by @dikancenter

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a month ago

The oldest records this country has were never photographed, or written down, or filed anywhere.
They were spoken. Which means they only survive if somebody tells them and somebody shows up to listen.
On Friday 4 September, Nana Asaase is telling folk stories at Dikan Ahenfie in Twi and English, in a room with about sixty chairs in it.

6PM. Free. No tickets — just come early.
#ByTheFire #DikanAhenfie #NanaAsaase #Accra taken in South La Estate, Accra by @dikancenter

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2 months ago

Thank you to everyone who came on Friday.

Some of you stood in front of these photographs for a long time. That’s exactly what they’re for. If it moved you, tell someone about it and if you haven’t been yet, come this week.

Free entry · 10am–7pm, every day except Mondays · until 24 Sept · 📍 Dikan Gallery taken in South La Estate, Accra by @dikancenter

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3 months ago

You free tomorrow evening?

Congo, close to home is going up on our walls right now. Printed big. Shot by seven photographers who live there. @guerchomndebo working with the curator @pninson

Doors open 6pm. Free. Just walk in. taken in Accra, Ghana by @dikancenter

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3 months ago