
Prince Gyasi
Palliation, 2020

The 25-year-old Ghanaian visual artist Prince Gyasi takes bold, striking images—with his iPhone. Gyasi sets himself apart from many other contemporary photographers not just through his unconventional choice of camera, but also his bold use of color. His images are often digitally altered to create stunning juxtapositions between his subjects’ skin and their coastal surroundings. Gyasi is inspired by the inhabitants of his hometown Accra; he poses them against bright walls and purple skies, emphasizing the beauty of Black skin and challenging dominant Western beauty ideals. “The reason why I play with colors a lot is because most visual artists tell African stories in a negative way,” Gyasi said at a social entrepreneurship forum in 2019. He strives to capture joyful images that instill hope and highlight the resiliency of his subjects, but also capture the realities of living in a city where there is a lack of access to food and education.


The 25-year-old Ghanaian visual artist Prince Gyasi takes bold, striking images—with his iPhone. Gyasi sets himself apart from many other contemporary photographers not just through his unconventional choice of camera, but also his bold use of color. His images are often digitally altered to create stunning juxtapositions between his subjects’ skin and their coastal surroundings. Gyasi is inspired by the inhabitants of his hometown Accra; he poses them against bright walls and purple skies, emphasizing the beauty of Black skin and challenging dominant Western beauty ideals. “The reason why I play with colors a lot is because most visual artists tell African stories in a negative way,” Gyasi said at a social entrepreneurship forum in 2019. He strives to capture joyful images that instill hope and highlight the resiliency of his subjects, but also capture the realities of living in a city where there is a lack of access to food and education.