Before the football, they had to make a pitch

The yellow football almost touches the bottom of Piyapong Boonlawd's photograph. Two players chase it down, one in turquoise, the other in black and yellow. Neither pair of eyes is letting that ball go. You almost forget the background. Then you read the photographer's words: the ground is beneath an elevated road beside the sea in Xinfeng, Hsinchu. Everyone helped clear the space before they could play their first match there.

You thought you were watching a game. A few lines later, you find the work that happened outside the frame to make it possible.

The photograph is part of One-Forty's online migrant-photography archive. On September 20, the organization joins the National Theater and Concert Hall to open Sundays Unseen, a free exhibition of work from earlier Migrant International Photography Awards and the 2026 edition. For many migrant workers, especially caregivers, a day off is hardly an empty square waiting patiently in the calendar. Time has to be found. This group of players also had to conjure up a pitch.

In another 2026 archive work, Indonesian photographer Muhalim Sahwan April Utama gives most of the frame to the sky. Kites rise over a rocky shore; people and driftwood stay close to the ground. The accompanying words for Layangan Waktu (時間的風箏) miss the freedom of childhood: playing until you forgot the time, before you had a living to make. Adults can still play. Afterwards, though, work is waiting.

Read that, then look at the sky again. It becomes rather hard to leave.

Give the words beside the photographs some time too. There is sweat behind that football pitch that the shutter never caught; a sunny afternoon can bring back the person you were before you had to keep an eye on the clock.

Sundays Unseen runs September 20–November 29 at National Theater Door 2, daily noon–8pm, with free admission. The physical exhibition has yet to open, but the online archive is there now. Click a photograph and hear from the person who made it.