Date
26 January 2016
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King Bansah: the king in the boiler suit, as captured by Mirka Laura Severa

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Date
26 January 2016

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It’s hard to imagine our little doddery Queen getting all covered in engine oil and tinkering with an exhaust pipe. But in one far-away corner of the world, a monarch reigns who’s unafraid to get dirty. So much so, that he works as a car mechanic.

The glittering, yet grubby hero of our tale is one King Bansah – full name Togbui Ngoryifia Céphas Kosi Bansah – king of Hohoe Gbi Traditional Ghana. King Bansah rules over the Eastern Ghanan region of Gbi, which houses 300,000 members of the Ewe people. He also acts as “Superior and Spiritual Chief of the Ewe People” for a further two million people in nearby Togo.

This alone is interesting and exotic, but the really fascinating details of King Bansah’s life are where it’s not so noble: he doesn’t in fact live in Ghana, but in Ludwigshafen in southern Germany to work on the cars.

Photographer Mirka Severa was naturally intrigued by this story, and set out to document the strange lie of King Bansah. “I met King Bansah for the first time in 2009. He was living right next to the city where I was studying during that time, and I started documenting his ambivalent life,” she explains.

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Mirka Laura Severa: King Bansah series

Mirka learned that King Bansah’s strange story began with his grandfather back in 1973, when he was king of Hohoe, who sent the young Céphas Bansah to Germany to train as an agricultural machines mechanic. He ended up staying there and established his own car repair shop. Then in 1987 he received the fax saying his grandfather had died. As his father and oldest brother were left handed, they were deemed “unfit” to be named king in the Ewe tradition. That left him in line for the throne, and Céphas Bansah was appointed by the elders of his tribe to become his grandfather’s successor.

Mirka explains: “He accepted the kingship and made it his new task in life to support the wellbeing and development of his people – while still working from 9 to 5 in his car workshop.

“At his enthronement, he already realised that this task was best completed if he continued to live in Germany. This is why the monarch rules his people via phone and email from Ludwigshafen, Germany.”

Having got to know King Bansah, Mirka joined him in his travels to Ghana, which he visits several times a year to attend to the needs of his people, and also shot a number of images of him at work in his hometown, mending cars just like any normal, non-royal person might. The images were all captured on film, using a mixture of medium format images shot with a Hassellbad and a Mamiya and small format Yashica shots.

“All pictures the pictures are somewhere between being a snapshot and being staged,” says Mirka. “They’re more like documentary shots than my usual work, which is more along the lines of set design.”

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Mirka Laura Severa: King Bansah series

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Mirka Laura Severa: King Bansah series

The images show the baffling double life King Bansah leads: in one shot, he’s held aloft in glittering traditional African dress. In another, he’s atop a sad, tired old exercise bike. It’s a fascinating insight into a strange life that mixes royalty, working class life and philanthopry.

“King Bansah is living a very healthy life (he never drank alcohol, doesn’t smoke and his favourite drinks are hot tea or milk). He paradoxically sells his own beer called Akosombo, which is delicious, and part of the earnings from that go into his aid projects,” Mirka explains.

These aid projects include building new educational and medical centres and King Bansah has worked to establish a number of new schools, including a private learning centre and a craft school in Hohoe.

The project marks a departure from previous work we’ve featured by Mirka, such as a very stylised fashion shoot based around airport security:http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/severa-frahm, created with her assistant Michael Frahm.

What links her usual portfolio work in the fashion world and her insight into the life of King Bansah is her eye for detail, and turning certain nuances into an image into something special. A cloth slung over a shoulder picks up a glorious flash of blue; a forlorn fridge is contrasted with an African drum to beautiful effect.

Through her images, Mirka has presented us a world, and a king, we never knew existed. And while the series alone presents a wonderful narrative, the little tales she tells are just as compelling.

“I regularly visited him in his German home in in Ludwishafen – where he always cooked the most delicious African food, oxtail with plantain and yam,” she says. “When he travels to Ghana however, he prefers to bring typical German dishes with him – for example Zwiebelschmalz (onion lard), which he likes to have for breakfast.” A man of routine and a man of his people, we’re chuffed Mirka decided to turn her documentary lens on this intriguing character.

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Mirka Laura Severa: King Bansah series

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Mirka Laura Severa: King Bansah series

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Mirka Laura Severa: King Bansah series

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Mirka Laura Severa: King Bansah series

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Mirka Laura Severa: King Bansah series

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About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

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