Archival pigment print mounted on aluminium Dibond.
One Size Only / 127 x 101.6 cm / 50 x 40 in
Hand-signed by the artist, with title, date, and edition number inscribed in ink on an archival label affixed to the reverse side of the mounted photograph
A courtyard in Accra, sunlit and softly decaying, becomes a stage for the small labour of becoming presentable. On the left a young barber leans in with his clippers, shaping the head of a boy swathed in a black cape, patient and a little bored, as boys are in the chair. Behind them a couple works at a different toilette: a woman in a patterned dress adjusts the tie of a man in a brown suit, her hands precise, both of them smiling. Two generations, groomed in parallel.
Idun-Tawiah has an essayist’s eye for the texture of a place — the terracotta wall with its map of peeling paint, the potted plants on the low ledges, the shuttered windows, the good shoes on the rough floor. Nothing is grand and everything is dignified. The picture belongs to “Sunday Special” (2022), and it understands that dressing up is never only vanity; it is a way of announcing that today matters, that one is expected somewhere, that care will be taken.
The title’s proverb turns the scene tender rather than deterministic. What passes from man to boy here is not fate but attention: how to sit still, how to be handled, how to make yourself ready for the world’s gaze. The barber’s concentration, the woman’s adjusting fingers — these are the quiet transmissions by which a community keeps teaching its young how to be seen. The camera simply grants them the seriousness they already possess.
A courtyard in Accra, sunlit and softly decaying, becomes a stage for the small labour of becoming presentable. On the left a young barber leans in with his clippers, shaping the head of a boy swathed in a black cape, patient and a little bored, as boys are in the chair. Behind them a couple works at a different toilette: a woman in a patterned dress adjusts the tie of a man in a brown suit, her hands precise, both of them smiling. Two generations, groomed in parallel.
Idun-Tawiah has an essayist’s eye for the texture of a place — the terracotta wall with its map of peeling paint, the potted plants on the low ledges, the shuttered windows, the good shoes on the rough floor. Nothing is grand and everything is dignified. The picture belongs to “Sunday Special” (2022), and it understands that dressing up is never only vanity; it is a way of announcing that today matters, that one is expected somewhere, that care will be taken.
The title’s proverb turns the scene tender rather than deterministic. What passes from man to boy here is not fate but attention: how to sit still, how to be handled, how to make yourself ready for the world’s gaze. The barber’s concentration, the woman’s adjusting fingers — these are the quiet transmissions by which a community keeps teaching its young how to be seen. The camera simply grants them the seriousness they already possess.