Aperture is pleased to present this special edition by Carlos Idun-Tawiah, from his series Sunday Special, now available in a 16-by-20 inch edition. Flower Boy, Accra, 2023 is featured in on and the cover of Aperture #252: “Accra.”
"Family albums are the starting point of the series Sunday Special (2022) by Carlos Idun-Tawiah, who draws on the semiotics of earlier Ghanaian photographers’ work to create his own visual language. It’s a language that resonates with a bygone time but is also deeply contemporary. Incorporating his experience with fashion photography, from Vogue to GQ to Harper’s Bazaar, Idun Tawiah’s photographs emit the highly stylized tone of editorial spreads and, at the same time, the intimacy of personal pictures of friends and loved ones.
Idun-Tawiah who is based in Accra, was born in 1997, exactly forty years after Ghana’s independence. His vision is steeped in nostalgia—both personal (depictions of young people attending school, visiting the barber, playing soccer, or going to church) and collective (poses, fashions, and hairstyles). He conjures visceral recollections held in his memory yet out of reach. The photographer does this not just through his aesthetic approach but by constructing whole stories, biographies, and characters, by bringing in costumes and sets, and by having his subjects freely inhabit the roles they are playing. These scenes have, both in composition and intent, a multilayered and multifaceted resonance."
— Nana Oforiatta Ayim
"Family albums are the starting point of the series Sunday Special (2022) by Carlos Idun-Tawiah, who draws on the semiotics of earlier Ghanaian photographers’ work to create his own visual language. It’s a language that resonates with a bygone time but is also deeply contemporary. Incorporating his experience with fashion photography, from Vogue to GQ to Harper’s Bazaar, Idun Tawiah’s photographs emit the highly stylized tone of editorial spreads and, at the same time, the intimacy of personal pictures of friends and loved ones.
Idun-Tawiah who is based in Accra, was born in 1997, exactly forty years after Ghana’s independence. His vision is steeped in nostalgia—both personal (depictions of young people attending school, visiting the barber, playing soccer, or going to church) and collective (poses, fashions, and hairstyles). He conjures visceral recollections held in his memory yet out of reach. The photographer does this not just through his aesthetic approach but by constructing whole stories, biographies, and characters, by bringing in costumes and sets, and by having his subjects freely inhabit the roles they are playing. These scenes have, both in composition and intent, a multilayered and multifaceted resonance."
— Nana Oforiatta Ayim
Flower Boy, Accra, 2023
Archival pigment print
16 x 20 inches
Edition of 10
Signed and numbered by the artist on a label
This image is available in larger gallery edition sizes. Email prints@aperture.org for information and additional works available by the artist.
Carlos Idun-Tawiah (b.1997) is a Ghanaian photographer and filmmaker based in Accra, Ghana who centers African resurgence and preservation of the dynamic lives of Black people. Inspired by Ghana’s rich history of archival and fashion photography, Carlos brings his life-long investment in art into documenting the ever-changing landscapes of Black life across the African continent and the diaspora.
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