When Jude Lartey was growing up, he found his dad’s photobook from the ’60s and ’70s and was surprised at how compelling the images were despite the simplicity of its contents: parties, places in Ghana, and portraits of his dad. He also found his family’s photobook of images of his grandfather who was a personal bodyguard for Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the West African country’s first prime minister and then elected president when the country gained independence from Britain.
In these photographs, he uncovered his hidden artistic roots, something that inspired him to pursue image-making as a profession. Jude was born and raised in Accra, Ghana’s largest city and its capital. His images have gone on from the spotlight of PhotoVogue to the pages of GQ Middle East , reportage in National Public Radio and The Guardian, and campaigns for brands such as Levi’s, Converse, and Adidas.
The 23-year-old has had an interesting career trajectory since he started modeling in high school. From there, he’s gone into styling, creative and art directing, set design, and then photography. His previous creative lives are all poured into his images, whether it’s a carefully staged tableau in his house or sensually-styled lookbooks for Accra-based fashion labels such as Palmwine IceCream.
Lartey prefers to be called an “image-maker,” which emphasizes his skills in visualizing images from the ground up. From his days on sets where he basically did everything at once, he joked that all.
