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James Koblah Bruce Vanderpuije
James Koblah Bruce Vanderpuije, is the founder of the Deo Gratias Photo Studio. Also known as Nile Kofi Bruce II, James was born on 7th March, 1899 to the late Mr. Emmanuel Vanderpuije and the late Madam Eleanor Afua Bruce of Otublohum Royal family, James Town, Accra, old, British Accra. James was a son of a bourgeois family in Accra. His father was an influential Agent of Messrs. J. J. Fisher & Co. Limited, during the 1880's to the 1900's and was popularly known to be one of the "Merchant Princes of the Gold Coast". J. K. Bruce-Vanderpuije was educated at the Accra Royal School, the first formal educational institution in the Gold Coast (1672) at James Town. His education and up-bringing was jointly undertaken by his late Uncles Messrs. J. W. Blankson Mills and J. Kitson Mills founders of Accra Royal School, with whom he stayed at “Zion House” James Town, Accra. James learned photography from an old master photographer J.A.C.Holm for three years before he later opened the Deo Gratias Photo Studio in 1922 when he was 23. He started making portraits of families and groups of the British, Indian traders and the black aristocracy.

J. K. Bruce Vanderpuije captured historic events in the Gold Coast. He was the man who captured Major Imray’s shooting of the late Sgt. Adjetey Sowah and others at the Christianborg crossroads on 28th February 1948, which was later tended in evidence for the crime committed. In 1957, after the independence of the Gold Coast, he started to work for the government. He was employed at the Accra Town Council now Accra Metropolitan Authority, for a brief period. He took up more works for companies, covering product launches and rebranding exercises for years until the 1970s. Vanderpuije often took pictures in the streets using a portable camera. James employed other photographers to work with him as well as teach others the art of photography. Among the photographers he taught were his own sons, John and Isaac, who went to Europe to hone their skills. He left his son Isaac, who took over the Deo Gratias-Studio, a fund made up mainly of negatives 18×24 plate glass, a documentary and artistic quality of the colonial period with no equivalent in West Africa. Deo Gratias and the dream of the Bruce- Vanderpuijes is succeeded by Mrs. Kate Tamakloe nee Aku Bruce-Vanderpuije, grand daughter of J.K Bruce- Vanderpuije and daughter of Isaac Hudson Bruce-Vanderpuije