*No place like home*, 1996 © Philip Kwame Apagya

This interview was originally featured in Issue No. 15 — Place.

ELIZABETH MEALEY: I love your work, but when I was researching you I couldn’t find much written recently. Could you orient us to what you’re doing at the moment?

PHILIP KWAME APAGYA: My initial idea was to come and expand my photography business in the United States, because I had wanted to travel out of my homeland somewhere else to expand my business. When I came to the United States for the first time, it was to do an exhibition in Houston – we did a group exhibition. I went back home, but then I came to Georgia.

ELIZABETH: What brought you to Georgia of all places?

PHILIP: Actually, it was somebody who I knew from back home; since childhood I was taking her photograph. I got in contact with her, and she was living there with her husband, so I paid them a visit, and that was that. First I came to New York, and then I flew to Georgia. That was in 2006. Just for the time being, I’ve settled here, because the whole world’s photographic market is in the United States.

Right now things are not working the way I want. I want to be straight before the photographic business moves on. The ideas have been piled up, and it’s a studio in my head, I tell you. It’s blowing my mind, but I can’t exhibit it right now.

*Business Lady,* 1996 © Philip Kwame Apagya

ELIZABETH: Are you doing photography right now?

PHILIP: Photography is who I am and what I am. I’ve just been working to keep myself up, but that is not my dream. I want to be straight before coming out, and then that will be a great boom.

ELIZABETH: I wanted to go back to your childhood. I read that your father was a photographer?

PHILIP: Yes, my dad, my great dad is a photographer. He is called Paul Kofi Apagya, and I am Philip Kwame Apagya. He is senior and I am junior.

*Nana Cockpit in Shama*, 2006 © Philip Kwame Apagya

ELIZABETH: When you started to do photography, did you consider yourself an artist?

PHILIP: In those days I wasn’t considering myself as an artist. But you know, in comparison with the photo backdrops my dad was using – those days it was just black and white, you know, painted with the staircases and a whole lot of things. And being a young man, I should think modern. By then color photography wasn’t there. It was a new introduction. My dad tried to take photographs with color, and the printing was very difficult. I had two pen pals, one in Bahrain and also one in the Netherlands. They helped me print my early works. I would send them rolls of film, they would print them and send the prints and the negatives back. That was the first time those ideas started. I took color photos of friends, and whatever I saw, and I mailed it to these friends and they printed them for me. So with that I said, “Wow, it’s better I go from the old system to this new system.”

By then color was just beginning in Ghana. So I had my dad’s ideas and my new modern ideas, and I said, “This color should portray in the view of people.” That is how the whole thing started. By then the Lebanese and the Koreans started bringing their old second-hand printing machines to Ghana. We started doing something. We’d take them and send them to the laboratory, and they’d print it. It was a new boost. So we started the competition rolling, up to now.

*Come on Board*! 2000 © Philip Kwame Apagya

ELIZABETH: Any last thoughts?

PHILIP: Well, there are more questions than answers. But the answer would be, I am not as I used to be. I am struggling. But I will soon come out to continue what I was doing, God willing. That is my aim. I have been hiding for a while, but I know people are still looking for me. They should keep looking, because I will soon come out.