Carlos Idun-Tawiah Ghanaian, b. 18/5/1997

Everything here is seen through a filthy pane. A dark window frame quarters the picture, and behind the glass two people stand facing each other in silhouette, close enough that their profiles nearly meet: a woman with her hair in a low bun and a bag on her shoulder, a man in the one pale blue shirt the light has reached. Past them a salmon-coloured wall carries a single turquoise shutter. Off to the left, under a red and white parasol, somebody is carrying a child. The glass is streaked and speckled and lays a haze over all of it.

A photograph is supposed to be a way of getting a better look. This one puts an obstacle in front of every single thing it shows. The lovers come down to outline, the street to a colour, the passers-by to soft shapes, and the dirt on the pane is sharper than any of them. The most legible object in the frame is a smear on a window. Even the mullions get in the way, cutting the couple off at the shoulder and shunting the best light into a pane where nothing much is happening.

Then, in the pane on the right, an orange balloon. A boy holds it in front of him out in the sunlight, and he has dissolved almost entirely while the balloon keeps its edge and its colour and declines to join the general blur. It is the one thing in the picture that came through the glass intact. Idun-Tawiah built an image about not being able to see properly and then let a party balloon walk into it. Whatever you came to look at, the eye ends up on the balloon.