ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on an interview with Kate Tamakloe-Vanderpuije, who inherited the photographic collection of the Deo Gratias Photo Studio in Accra, Ghana, from her father. The chapter engages with a number of diverging yet overlapping concerns vis-à-vis photographic archives from the colonial period and touches on a number of themes regarding photography in Ghana, among them the role of African photographers in the context of colonial photography, the importance of photography in documenting everyday economic, political and socio-cultural life, aesthetics and the image, and heritage practice, namely the study, management, preservation, conservation and curation of private family and community archives. The chapter focuses on the ways a critical heritage approach denotes an ethical heritage approach that foregrounds material traces from the past in the present by engaging with communities, custodians, individuals and their heritage practices.
