Ghana’s first professional women photographer, Felicia Abban (b. 1935) spent her sixty year career documenting Ghanain society and history. Noted for her studio portraits, she opened ‘Mrs. Felicia Abban’s Day and Night Quality Art Studio’ in Jamestown, Accra, hiring other women as apprentices and passing on her skills.
Felicia began her career in the 1950s as her father’s apprentice, at his photography studio in Sekondi-Takoradi in Ghana’s Western Region. Training with him for four years, she eventually moved to Jamestown following her marriage.
Felicia had an acute awareness of style, and her work has been compared to fashion photography. She occasionally appeared in her own photographs, distributing postcards of her work to promote her business.
Felicia went on to work as a photographer for Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, during the 1960s, creating detailed analysis of her country’s transformation.
