BOYS WILL ALWAYS BE BOYS
Carlos Idun-Tawiah
Text: courtesy of Carlos Idun-Tawiah.
I was that kid who was always around the boys. As years passed I lost touch with so many cherished friendships and hobbies. I realized a lot of people I grew up with shared in this sense of detachment and so I created this photo story.
This ongoing photo series is essentially a requiem of my childhood friendships and that of many people who grew up in communal environments. This is my own way of highlighting the joy of friendship and community especially among boys, and how quickly yet deeply we get connected to each other through leisure and our aspirations. I also sought to express the beauty of the mundane and how far they go in synthesizing our communities; like how a ball could bring hundreds of us together on a dusty pitch, to how flying kites and chasing sunsets at the beach felt like therapy.
It also baffled me how we could go months as friends without knowing our real names and could still act like life-long brothers. This body of work is meant to question that observation and open the dialogue of how simple life could be if we could just see each other as family before anything else. I hope to keep photographing this story for as long as I live; where I also focus on the nuances of how time changes the dynamic of friendships and leisure.
Carlos Idun-Tawiah
Carlos Idun-Tawiah (b. 1997) is a Ghanaian photographer and filmmaker based in Accra Ghana. Inspired by Africa’s rich photographic archives, Carlos seeks to remark and reimagine the ever-changing landscapes of Black life. His photographs are mostly characterized with subject matters around the vernacular, community, love and hope. Through his fictionalized photographic stories, Idun-Tawiah is committed to carefully accenting Black beauty and depth, by telling the African story with as much clarity as grace.
