Big Dreams: A Life Built on Gold. Photos by Nii Obodai, photographer and Director of Nuku Studios.
Gold is almost never what miners want. Gold is a conduit for achieving their big dreams: a big house, school fees, artistic endeavors, a new life abroad, or a stable income. Portraits of gold miners focus on suffering, inferiority, and disconnectedness. Rarely are their lives documented as they are, driven by desires universal to everyone. For some, the big dream feels like a mirage they can see but not reach. For others, the big dream morphs into a new one, once the previous dream comes true. This project documented the individual journeys to their dreams. It was a collaboration with Chinese journalist, Yiting Sun. Initially, it was the gold trade, rather than the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that provided the drive to build the imposing forts and castles along the shores of Ghana in the 1500s and 1600s. I started working on this project in the immediate aftermath of a government crackdown on illegal gold miners in Ghana in June 2013. The crackdown followed conflict between local and Chinese miners, whom the government ordered from the country.
At first, we sought out Chinese miners. The government was getting them to self-deport or be expelled. These guys were in hiding. Signs of the Chinese and mining were easily found. “Beware sodium cyanide convey” on this lorry hints at Chinese connection to gold, revealing too the movement of mining goods.
We moved to areas the Chinese had been mining. After violent clashes with local miners, military operations removed them. Abandoned equipment, areas deserted.
Well organized, an orderly workflow and dormitories. Well defended too, a 14-foot deep moat surrounds the camp, preventing local miners from stealing gold. Used shotgun shells tell a story.
I realized we had to look at ourselves as Ghanaians and not just blame the Chinese. Who owns land and has access to land is at the heart of many matters. We connected to local miners who had moved into Chinese sites and pits. See, a miner with a homemade “coolie” hat.
Miners exhausted. Bringing up ore, sitting in the presence of a gold buyer, a woman labourer, curled on the ground asleep, a gold nugget. Making so little from hard, hard labor.
Taking photos and observing one is aware of mobility – machines moving, people moving, gold moving. The military were still around so locals were going to the abandoned Chinese mines in a clandestine way. This miner is returning home at the end of the day, I took the picture from an abandoned excavator pond as he passed.
Heavy machinery is now used by small-scale miners, with serious effects on the environment. This led us to explore forests to see how they have been affected by mining.
The largest river in Ghana looks so tranquil. Looks are deceptive; it has come to a standstill as result of the use of dredgers brought in by the Chinese.
Going into the forest, we encountered buildings of early European mining companies, now derelict.
The richness and beauty of a relatively undestroyed forest environment stand in contrast to the impact mining has wrecked on other areas.
From forests affected by mining, we turned attention to non-mining people affected by mining. Here, private residences on registered property are being encroached upon. Local miners gave warnings and then started excavating. This man went to court to stop the miners and won his case, but to no avail, they continued mining.
From the nineteenth century, Prestea grew up as the first colonial gold mining town in Ghana. So much wealth has flowed from this area, but yet local development remains so limited. This dilapidated school sign seems to illustrate these inequalities.
This boy was not attending school at the time this photograph was made.
Many communities are affected by the lack of water supply due to exploitation of water resources by large and small-scale mining operations. This young girl stands by a community borehole pump whose well has dried up.
Joe Danka who came to Gbane in 2000 to prospect for gold. On realizing there were no schools available for the children in the community, he set aside his ambitions to mine gold and focused on building and establishing the school.
Students in one of the three classrooms.
Originally from Obuasi, Alfred King Sharpstone, popularly known as Nana, moved to Gbane to mine gold twenty years ago. He was one of the first teachers/miners at the school and now dedicates his full time teaching at the school. He is seen sitting in front of his house.
I took this photo of a gold miner and his wife some years ago. In 2020, I returned to look for him and discovered he had passed. His wife is now married to another miner. I was told that when widowed women try to remarry another miner.
This family lost their 11 and 13-year-old boys in a mine accident. They were playing in an open pit, which caved in. By the family’s account, these excellent school students became the first non-mining causalities from a mine accident in this community.
These women worked as a gang, mining a pit together. They did this to generate income to manage their families. They were the only female gang I met anywhere in the country.
I took these portraits in Kibi. They are of a mixture of local Ghanaian and migrant miners from Niger, and in the last photo from Burkina Faso.
Portrait of a woman and her son. She works with a gang of miners carrying 50-60 kg bags of ore from the mining site to the processing site, a distance of approximately half a kilometer.
Portrait of a miner’s wife. She moved to Prestea to look for a better life and married a local miner.
Miners pose for their portrait right after finishing their underground shift.
Big Dreams: A Life Built on Gold. Photos by Nii Obodai, photographer and Director of Nuku Studios.
Gold is almost never what miners want. Gold is a conduit for achieving their big dreams: a big house, school fees, artistic endeavors, a new life abroad, or a stable income. Portraits of gold miners focus on suffering, inferiority, and disconnectedness. Rarely are their lives documented as they are, driven by desires universal to everyone. For some, the big dream feels like a mirage they can see but not reach. For others, the big dream morphs into a new one, once the previous dream comes true. This project documented the individual journeys to their dreams. It was a collaboration with Chinese journalist, Yiting Sun. Initially, it was the gold trade, rather than the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that provided the drive to build the imposing forts and castles along the shores of Ghana in the 1500s and 1600s. I started working on this project in the immediate aftermath of a government crackdown on illegal gold miners in Ghana in June 2013. The crackdown followed conflict between local and Chinese miners, whom the government ordered from the country.
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ARTistic and ARTisanal
New Dreams: Imagining Gold Lives ⟶