Series: Memories Between Earth And Sky.
Archival pigment print mounted on aluminium Dibond.
Edition of 3
40.6 x 61 cm / 16 x 24 in
40.6 x 61 cm / 16 x 24 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
© The Artist
They are dancing, or rather he has just turned her, and she is caught pivoting on the ball of one foot, her white skirt swinging, her cream jacket bright against the terracotta wall behind them. His arm is raised to spin her, his brown suit narrow and correct, and her face is tipped toward him in the frank pleasure of the movement. Around them the light is the golden, forgiving light of late afternoon by the sea, and it lays a warmth over the sand of the little square that makes the whole scene feel remembered rather than observed.
The setting supplies the romance without being asked. Behind the couple a weathered orange building carries a hand-painted sign, HOSTELLERIE du chevalier de BOUFFLERS, its shutters a faded blue, bougainvillea climbing at its base; a flame tree and a lone palm frame the composition, and beyond them the water lies flat and pale to the horizon. It is unmistakably Senegal, the vintage tailoring and the colonial-era facade conjuring a courtship out of an earlier decade. Idun-Tawiah has a portraitist’s eye for how clothes and place flatter a face, and he lets the couple’s elegance rhyme with the elegance of the ruin.
What lingers is the intimacy of the gesture. There is nothing performed for the camera in the way she surrenders to the turn, nothing stiff in the way he holds his free hand in his pocket, unhurried, as though the two of them have all the afternoon in the world. The picture belongs to that seductive corner of photography where fashion and affection meet, where a well-cut suit and a well-timed spin become a way of saying that these two are in love and know it. One wants to keep it, the way one keeps a photograph of people one adores.