I found my way back to making photographs – Brooks Anne Robinson

During her 28-year career in the American diplomatic service, Brooks Anne Robinson served mainly in Africa, where her assignments were at U.S. embassies and consulates in Accra – Ghana, Kaduna – Nigeria, Mbabane – Swaziland, and Monrovia – Liberia. She also served at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, at the headquarters of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC., and as Diplomat in Residence at the University of California, Berkeley.

Robinson is however better known as the ‘Walls’ photographer. Through her images taken in several African cities, she examines the stories walls can tell us – or the secrets they hold. Seventeen photographs will be showing at AUCC, Adabraka, from April 4 to 11, 2023, as part of this year’s Accra Visual Arts Festival [AVIEW] organized by Konyo Museum of Ghanaian Art.

Following are excerpts of an interview with the photographer. Brooks Anne Robinson will be meeting journalism students at AUCC at 11:00 am on April 5, 2023.

Nana S. Achampong: You did African Studies among the programs you studies: did you plan to spend the greater part of your life here?

Brooks Anne Robinson: Life can be funny sometimes! I actually got interested in Africa while I was studying literature in Norway. As a foreign student myself, I got to know students from all over the world, and there were quite a few Africans at my university. That year I learned two important things about myself:  I was not cut out to be a literary critic or scholar, and I was very interested in the challenges African countries were tackling as they became independent. (This was 45 years ago, bear in mind.). When I returned to the U.S. I switched gears and pursued international relations and African studies. My dream was to do development work in Africa, but before I could go to graduate school I got offered a job in the diplomatic service. I decided to take it, figuring if I didn’t like it I could always go to grad school later. But I thrived in that career and never looked back. My first assignment was to Ghana in 1986, and I married my Ghanaian husband in 1988. The rest, as they say, is history!

NSA: What is the greatest misconception about the continent?

BAR: In 1980 when I told my mother I wanted to pursue African studies, she said, “Oh why, Brooks Anne? It’s full of despair and parasites.” I would say that pretty well sums up misconceptions in my home country. Though I believe things ARE changing on the other side of the Atlantic. Music, movie, and art coming out of Africa are opening the eyes – and minds – of Americans, helping them understand that the continent is diverse and dynamic. Just as American cultural products shape people’s views of America, so African cultural products shape people’s views of Africa. And let me add that, while I have experienced parasites – both in Africa and in America, by the way – the Africa I have come to know is full of dedicated, energetic, and creative people who are working in every sector to move this continent forward. Sadly, my mother never got to come see the continent for herself. She was planning to come live with me in Ghana, but got sick and died in 1987.

NSA: If you were made president of Ghana, what ONE fundamental change would you initiate?

BAR: Well, that is a difficult question, and one that would not be easy to answer diplomatically, since saying something needs to be done DIFFERENTLY implies that things aren’t being done RIGHT. But let me venture to say something, since you are asking – something that relates to my work as a photographer. As you know, I’m interested in the lives lived in African cities. Urbanization is a phenomenon all over the world, but African cities are growing at an especially rapid rate. And I think too little is being done to help make our cities more liveable for everyone.

NSA: How does a Foreign Service Officer of your caliber get into photography?

BAR: The truth is that I started my college career as an art student. I was mainly interested in sculpture, but of course [I] did drawing and painting as well. I also took up a camera and learned to work in a darkroom. I switched gears a couple of times before landing on African studies, but have always been an art lover, so it was natural for me to return to doing creative work when I retired from the diplomatic service.

NSA: Why are you interested in contemporary urban Africa and the lives people live?

BAR: As I was preparing to retire from full-time work a few years ago, I went through a process of figuring out what I wanted to do with the final chapter of life. I started out wanting to make documentaries about contemporary Africa. I wanted to share a truer, deeper, more complex image of what life is really like here. As an American who has spent most of her adult life on the continent, I thought I was well situated to do that. I quickly understood that documentaries tell stories, so I took a writing class; and to retrain my eye I picked up a camera again. So, I found my way back to making photographs, but have never worked on a documentary.

NSA: As a photographer, what stories have walls and buildings told you about the people who live there?

BAR: Six or seven years ago I took part in a wonderful and intensive photography workshop, run by Nuku Studio at the Nubuke Foundation. Each participant had to create a ten-page photo booklet. My own was a meditation on what some walls do NOT tell us: the silence of the walls in Ghana’s slave-trading castles. Those walls DON’T speak to us. We have shockingly little knowledge about the lives of the many thousands of captives who passed through those torture chambers. Aside from a handful of memoirs written by people sent into slavery, we don’t know the specific stories of the victims. So that’s one type of wall. I have a few images here from that series. However, most of my images at AUCC are of walls that do speak to us. When we look at how these walls have been built and decorated, we see stories of creativity, intertwined with practicality. We also find a love of beauty.

NSA: Do buildings shape their residents?

BAR: (I don’t have anything to say on this.)

NSA: Anything else you want to add? 

BAR: I hope viewers come away after looking at my photographs thinking, as a friend of mine said, “I’ll never look at walls the same way again.”  Look, see the beauty around you, and enjoy!

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