Enda’s pictures show lockdown in new light

A photography project born out of lockdown and filled with colour, nostalgia, an odd touch of grime and a few Catholic icons, has won a major award for Galway artist Enda Burke. The show, Homebound with my Parents is now going on display at the popular Coffeewerk and Press café exhibition space in Galway City’s Quay Street.

Enda, from Mervue in the city, normally specialises in outdoor story-based photography, but when lockdown took hold early last year there wasn’t much happening outside, so he turned his gaze closer to home. He was living with his parents, Michael and Denise, at the time and decided to make them the central figures of a Covid-19 photo series.

Enda took all the photos using a 35mm film camera but before he picked it up, he drew each scene out on a sketchbook.

Then, he built theatre-style sets in his parents’ house to create a variety of tableaux in which Denise and Michael feature, together or individually, as protagonists. The backgrounds include a range of vivid wallpaper, holy pictures and old-fashioned televisions. Vintage radios and mirrors as well as jigsaws, tins of beans and dodgy clothing also feature.

The images he creates invite the viewers to build stories around them – and while the settings are domestic, they’re surreal too.

In one photo, Michael is working out – only he isn’t. In another, Denise is at a table, holding a cigarette while eating a packet of Tayto and reading a book. There’s a plate of beans and an ashtray filled with butts on the table. It “has that element of grime in it”, says Enda. Like the others, it’s also quirky and kitsch.

Michael and Denise are both creative: he writes short stories and she’s into interior design and colour, says Enda. His photography marries both these talents, creating dramas in a colourful, surreal environment.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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