GHANA’S FIRST FEMALE PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER IS DEAD

Mrs. Abban was born in Takoradi, Ghana, a harbour city, where her father ran a photographic studio. Her mother, Efua Tanoa Yankey, was a Dixcove-Ahanta dealer.

The late designer Kofi Ansah, musician Tumi Ebow Ansah, and filmmaker Kwaw Ansah are her siblings, all of whom are as gifted and creative. She worked as an apprentice for her father for three years and then for an additional two. She spent a year away from Ghana, working at the Bennett studio in England.

She married Robert Abban, a textile designer who subsequently rose to the position of creative director at the Ghana Textiles and Manufacturing Company, and the two moved to Accra around 1956.

She opened Mrs. Felicia Abban’s Day and Night Quality Art, a photography business, in Accra. She took self-portraits and photographs when she visited private events, and these were shown as advertisements for her studio.

The works of Mrs. Abban impressed Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who offered her a role in joining the presidential press corps.

In addition to her self-photographs and those of President Nkrumah, Mrs. Abban took pictures of J. J. Rawlings, the longest-serving president of Ghana; Marian Ackaah, the wife of the first vice president of Ghana during the Fourth Republic; and Joyce Rosalind Aryee, a theologian who was formerly a politician.