Carlos Idun-Tawiah’s photograph from “Hero, Father, Friend” pulses with memory and meaning. In a sun-bright Accra courtyard, resourceful children stage a football match, black tires standing in for proper barriers.

The figure in a white number “1” jersey crouches atop a tire, gripping a soccer ball and instructing a young boy in yellow-and-black.

Their exchange, though quiet, thrums with the possibility of dreams and mentorship—a distillation of the rituals that shape a boy’s world.

This moving image belongs to Idun-Tawiah’s acclaimed series, a fictional and tender biopic that honors his late father and celebrates the often-unspoken bonds between Black fathers and sons in Ghana.

In the wake of losing his own father young and lacking photographs of their time together, the artist stages scenes infused with both memory and longing—mundane moments elevated into acts of legacy and love.

The football pitch is not just a ground for play but a space where presence, hope, and family are handed down.

Viewers are drawn into a layered nostalgia: murals glow along the background walls, their colors recalling a collective Ghanaian archive. Teammates blur in motion, laughter rising, yet at the image’s heart lingers a thoughtful quiet—a hand raised in guidance, a child’s attentive gaze.

Idun-Tawiah’s work blurs fact and fiction, reconstructing lost time and inviting us to witness how everyday acts—playing soccer, sharing lessons—become the bedrock of identity and belonging.

Through gentle light and evocative detail, “Hero, Father, Friend” makes visible those small, vital gestures between fathers, family, and friends.

The series is a monument to everyday tenderness and an enduring meditation on kinship’s power to shape the future.