Series: Sunday Special.
Archival pigment print mounted on aluminium Dibond.
Edition of 3
101.6 x 127 cm / 40 x 50 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
A young preacher throws one arm to the heavens, mouth open mid-cry, an open Bible beneath his hand and the stone arches of the church rising into shadow behind him. Carlos Idun-Tawiah made The Gospel in Accra in 2022, and it crackles with the energy of belief, a single instant of pure conviction caught at its peak of feeling.
Where much of Idun-Tawiah's work is hushed and domestic, here he turns to the theatre of faith. The clerical collar, the wooden prayer beads, the cheap plastic microphone, the worn leather book are all lit against the cool gloom of the nave and a far-off blush of stained glass. The gesture is everything, the pointing hand, the parted lips, the whole body leaning into the word, and the photographer frames it with the timing of a street photographer and the reverence of a believer. Youth, performance, and devotion meet in one charged pose, and the cheap microphone grounds the rapture firmly in the present, this church, this Sunday, this voice rising under the arches. Above him the Gothic vaulting climbs into shadow, dwarfing the young preacher even as his single raised arm seems to fill the entire nave.
Idun-Tawiah belongs to a celebrated new generation of Ghanaian image-makers reshaping how African life is pictured, on its own terms and in its own voice. Widely published and exhibited while still early in his career, his work is attracting serious international interest from galleries and collectors. The Gospel shows his range, the same tender eye that lingers over a quiet tea table here surrendering completely to electric, full-throated exaltation.