About Me

I am a social anthropologist and photographer living in Bern, Switzerland and working as a freelance cultural mediator in the field of arts and museums. My special interests lie in contemporary African arts, African religions and the artistic forms of expression associated with them.
Since 2003, I have spent several months each year in Ghana, where I also carried out field research for my thesis and PhD for several years. The main results of my research were published in text and images in “Concealed Art. The Figurative Palanquins and Coffins of Ghana” (Till Schaap Edition, Bern 2014).

To learn more about my publications, my collaborations with artists & museums and my travel photography, please visit @regulatschumi.ch

My history with photography began in Ghana, where I documented my fieldwork with my camera. But only after publishing my PhD I finally had enough time to dedicate myself more seriously to photography. To improve my photographic skills and to learn more about different genres and approaches, I attended several photo workshops in the following years with famous photographers like Peter Turnley, Ernesto Bazan, Maciej Dakovicz, and Magnum photographer Nikos Economopulos.
Over the last few years, I have been traveling to different countries in Europe, South America, and Asia, where I developed my passion for street photography. Nevertheless, I continued to return to Ghana for several months every year to continue my long-term projects connected with my anthropological interests and photography.

I love to photograph in Ghana because I believe the better that I know a country, the more exciting it becomes to work there. As an anthropologist, I not only search for beauty in my photography but also for content. I need to understand what I photograph. This is particularly important when it comes to spiritual things, such as religious rituals and celebrations, which are of particular interest to me. I also want to be able to speak to the people I photograph, know their faith and cultural background, and share everyday life with them. This is only possible if I live in the same place for a long time, and I am not just a visitor in transit. For this reason, I always like to go back to some places or attend the same events several times, always trying to take better pictures than before. I also try to capture the changes and different moods of a place or event over a longer period. Then, maybe, with enough persistence, one day, I will take that magical photograph of which I have always been dreaming.

Each of the various albums on this website contains an always changing selection of photographs from my several long-term projects in Ghana. The images were all taken in different years, but most of them between 2016 and July 2023.