The Gospel, Accra, Ghana, 2022

Carlos Idun-Tawiah is a Ghanaian artist, photographer, and filmmaker whose work transforms personal and collective memory into powerful visual narratives.

Based in Accra and represented globally by Galería Alta, he has emerged as a defining voice in contemporary African photography, creating images that seamlessly blend fiction and nonfiction, past and present, memory and imagination to explore the profound beauty and complexity of African life.

Idun-Tawiah's practice is defined by a conceptually sophisticated approach to documentary photography that transcends mere image capture. Rather than documenting moments, he reimagines them-constructing cinematic visual narratives that probe deeper into meaning and emotional truth. His creative methodology is rooted in personal experience and cultural memory, enabling him to craft stories with profound authenticity and resonance.

Central to his artistic vision is an exploration of universal human themes-family, faith, joy, youth, community, aging, friendship, hope, and love-examined through the specific lens of African and Black experience. His photographs honor the multifaceted dimensions of African life while simultaneously challenging historical gaps in representation and documentation. In this sense, Idun-Tawiah functions as both visual artist and cultural activist, advancing crucial conversations about whose stories deserve preservation and celebration

Sunday Special, draws from childhood memories of growing up in a Christian Ghanaian household. Through intimate exploration of family archives and evocative visual nostalgia, Idun-Tawiah captures the spiritual warmth and communal bonds that define Sundays in Accra, transforming quotidian rituals into meditations on belonging and faith. The series received the Contemporary African Photography Prize in 2023, recognizing its powerful contribution to contemporary photographic discourse.

Weaving lived memory with imagined scenarios, Idun-Tawiah reconstructs the father-son relationship in all its complexity, capturing both the tangible and ephemeral dimensions of kinship. The series' warm, nostalgic tonality and emotionally layered compositions invite viewers into a profound meditation on love, loss, and the enduring legacies that shape identity. Recently honored with the prestigious Deloitte Photo Grant (2025), the award includes an exhibition at the Triennale di Milano opening on November 27, 2025 and the publication of a monograph, further cementing the work's significance within contemporary photographic practice.