Awarded the Deloitte Photo Grant 2025, this imagined photo archive transmutes grief into a reflection on memory, absence and identity

When the Ghanaian photographer and filmmaker Carlos Idun-Tawiah’s (born 1997) father died, he was left with few photos of him and his father together. Photography was not widely accessible in Ghana during the time of his childhood, so Idun-Tawiah lacked a photo archive through which he could process his grief. He created Hero, Father, Friend in order to fill this disheartening gap. Featuring reconstructed scenes, both real and imagined, from Idun-Tawiah’s memory of his father, the photobook bears testimony to a cherished familial bond. Idun-Tawiah’s photographs depict piano lessons with his grandfather, days on the beach with his uncle and games of soccer with his cousins―a family network united to fill the complex role of paternity. Denis Curti and Alessio Fusi contribute essays that provide a critical counterpoint to Idun-Tawiah’s visual narration by analyzing how its emotional and aesthetic attributes interrelate.