Photographer explores family history through Ghana’s diaspora
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Eric Asamoah, a fashion photographer based in Linz, Austria, discovered photo albums while visiting his grandmother Lucy in Ghana.
The albums documented the lives of family members who had previously lived in the United Kingdom. Asamoah used these albums as the starting point for his exhibition, “As Our Hearts Bow,” to explore the lives of his parents and other female relatives before he was born.
He paired the archival photos with still life photographs of his grandmother’s worn shoes, selecting the left shoe from seven pairs as a symbolic representation of the past. Asamoah deliberately chose not to photograph his grandmother directly, believing the shoes offered a more subtle connection to her experiences. The exhibition also features photographs of his mother, aunts, and other important women in his family, all taken before Asamoah’s birth in 1999.
Asamoah noted the photos present an optimistic view of the past, omitting moments of pain or sadness. Mona Schubert, curator at the Foto Arsenal in Vienna, describes the space as a platform for emerging photographers and highlighted that a publication will accompany the exhibition, which Asamoah considers an extension of the artwork itself. He also observed that his parents’ photographic styles, his mother favoring close-ups and his father wide angles, seem to have influenced his own approach to the medium.
