Regula Tschumi is a Swiss ethnologist and photographer. She was born in 1957. She is based in Bern and lives between Switzerland and Ghana. She holds a doctorate in ethnology from the University of Basel. Her thesis was about the figurative palanquins and coffins of the Ga in Ghana.
For more than twenty years she has researched and photographed the funeral culture of the Ga in Ghana. Her photography began as a way to record observations during fieldwork. She has contributed to exhibition projects at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, the Musée d'Ethnographie in Neuchâtel and the Kunsthalle Hamburg. In 2024 she showed a selection of her work at the Cortona On The Move festival in Italy.
Her book Buried in Style. Artistic Coffins and Funerary Culture in Ghana was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2025. It has 240 pages and 283 color images. It shows the funeral culture of the Ga-Adangme, with coffins in the shape of animals, vehicles and more, and the work of the coffin maker Paa Joe and his apprentices. Her earlier book Concealed Art. The Figurative Palanquins and Coffins of Ghana appeared in 2014 with Edition Till Schaap. She also photographs everyday life on the street.
