{"id":5256,"date":"2026-01-28T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/?p=5256"},"modified":"2026-02-20T08:57:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T08:57:36","slug":"the-technicolor-surrealism-of-enda-burkes-photographic-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/28\/the-technicolor-surrealism-of-enda-burkes-photographic-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Technicolor Surrealism of Enda Burke\u2019s Photographic Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the far-off land of Galway, Ireland, there\u2019s a photographer named Enda Burke<\/a> creating whimsical, kitschy images with bright colors, bold patterns, and retro props he\u2019s found at thrift stores. Many of his photos also incorporate a rescue Greyhound named Bobo who belongs to his friend, and others feature his parents. Ever the maximalist myself, I was drawn to Burke\u2019s work immediately after coming upon his Instagram<\/a>, and reached out to learn more about his journey, point of view, and process. His responses to my questions are below, edited lightly for clarity and length.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s your creative background? What was your inroad into photography?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started off by taking a film production course like 10 or 15 years ago and I enjoyed that, but I found filmmaking was too reliant on other people, and the Irish weather is unreliable. So I got a BA in visual arts in Scotland, and I couldn\u2019t draw very well but I loved photography, so I specialized in that for the last two years. That\u2019s where I started. I was doing street photography for a long time, and then COVID happened so I couldn\u2019t do it anymore and I had to improvise. I started building sets in my house with my parents, so that\u2019s how the set design came into the equation and I\u2019ve developed that more from there.<\/p>\n

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What was it about street photography that you enjoyed so much when you first started taking pictures?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I enjoyed capturing people in transit, unstaged\u2014 which is kind of ironic because of what I do now. But I just really liked exploring unstaged moments, it felt kind of like fishing a little bit. And I always did it in Ireland which is quite nice. It wasn\u2019t always on the streets as well, I could have been in the countryside or anything; I just love capturing moments, slices of reality. But I didn\u2019t enjoy the stress of photographing people without their permission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Obviously your current work is very calculated and highly staged, but I still see aspects of your street photography influence. It\u2019s almost like you\u2019re manufacturing slice of life moments within the heightened, hyper-colorful, and whimsical world you\u2019ve built.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, there\u2019s more control, but a lot of my inspiration still comes from something I might see on the street and I\u2019ll make a note of it and I might incorporate it into a set. Or even just something someone\u2019s wearing. One time I saw my friend wearing a leopard-print jumper and green trousers and I really liked it, so I researched wallpaper that looked like that. So I still get a lot of inspiration from the street and I\u2019m taking that with me into my sets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Where would you say your love of vibrant color and maximalist pattern mixing comes from?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always really loved color; almost being seduced by color. Even the clothes I wear are really colorful. I can\u2019t pinpoint where it actually came from though. My mum really loves color, she\u2019s really into interior design and art and all that, so that probably had an influence on me. I just research wallpaper a lot. I spend hours and hours on the internet, and if I see wallpaper I like, I\u2019ll get it and I\u2019ll build around that. Or if I have a quirky prop, I\u2019ll build the story and color palette around the prop, or I\u2019ll paint the prop a certain color to go with the color scheme.\u00a0But there\u2019s definitely a science behind loving color, there\u2019s some sort of genetic science behind it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Can you share more about your \u201cHomebound With My Parents\u201d project that you created during COVID lockdown?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t photograph the world outside, so I had to bring the world into my house. I missed doing street photography and I wanted to do that, but I was stuck inside with my parents and they were the only people I could coax. But it worked well because they were happy to do it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I could still buy stuff online, so I started researching. I only wanted to do one shoot to see how it turned out, and it went really well. It was casual, there was no pressure because it was just my parents.\u00a0 If I was photographing models, it wouldn\u2019t have worked as well. So I got some momentum, and a few weeks later my mum was helping me, she was like, \u201cHave you seen this wallpaper?\u201d \u201cHave you tried this prop?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The whole nostalgia thing came from being in lockdown for a long time, I started to feel really nostalgic. I read there was a phenomenon for people to feel nostalgic during COVID because we couldn\u2019t really do anything. So that\u2019s where the retro nostalgia came into the photos, and the colors and the humor were an antidote to the gloom of the COVID lockdowns. I built the sets all over my house, to my mother\u2019s detriment, for the first three years. Thankfully I got a studio finally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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It also seems like you\u2019re drawn to using animals as your subjects. What is it about the specific animals you feature that you\u2019re drawn to?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

My friend has a rescue lurcher (I don\u2019t know if you have lurchers in America, it\u2019s basically a greyhound) that I photograph a lot. His name is Bobo. I just like that he\u2019s elegant and goofy; those two things attracted me to him and made me want to photograph him. He\u2019s a beautiful dog, so I wanted to capture his elegance, but also his goofiness, in the pictures. There\u2019s a kind of spontaneity with animals that you get with street photography. It brings a bit more chaos into the set that you don\u2019t usually get with most humans. The unpredictability; they can do wacky stuff which is quite fun. But you\u2019ve got to be fast when you\u2019re photographing them because they move fast. In a way, that\u2019s a bit like street photography because you have to capture them doing something that wasn\u2019t planned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I cold-approach people now when I see a cool dog. Like if I see a person with a Dalmatian, I\u2019ll get out of my car and be like, \u201cCan I photograph your dog?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Another motif present in a lot of your photos is religious iconography, but with a kitschy levity. Can you elaborate on why you include that imagery in so much of your work?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s more about the nostalgia I feel tied to those images. Those images were everywhere when I was growing up, and I found them very perplexing. Who are these people? But they\u2019re also kind of beautiful images. But I\u2019m neutral on the whole religion thing. I\u2019m not really religious, it\u2019s more about the Irishness and the nostalgia part of it, rather than promoting religion. I don\u2019t have a strong opinion either way, it\u2019s just there, which is how it was growing up in Ireland in the 90s. It was omnipresent, religious iconography was everywhere. And there\u2019s something quite beautiful about it if you take the religious aspects out of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s your ideation and development process like for a given photograph? How are you coming up with the ideas for these scenes you\u2019re creating and building and then bringing to life with your camera?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It takes me almost six weeks to make one image, which is a lot of work. My ideas come from a lot of different things. I might see something on the street that I\u2019ll make a mental note of, or I might get inspired by a movie scene. I get a lot of ideas at night time as well when I\u2019m trying to fall asleep. Even if I\u2019m in a charity shop (I think you guys call them thrift shops) I might find a prop that I\u2019m really interested in and then I\u2019ll build a story around it. So that\u2019ll be the guts of it, and then I\u2019ll do research for wallpaper for ages and ages and ages and then carpet. Then I\u2019ll build the set, which will take me a week or two. Then I\u2019ll take test shots, test shots, test shots to see what works and see what doesn\u2019t work. I\u2019ll paint props, take props out, try different props. Then I\u2019ll do the main shoot which is the fastest part, it only lasts like 20 minutes. The actual photoshoot is my least favorite part of it, I don\u2019t actually enjoy it that much, believe it or not. The editing is my favorite part of it. I\u2019ll spend a week on editing, I treat it like a painting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Do you have an example of an eye-catching object you found at a charity shop that you then built a shoot around?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

I might see a 70s workout bicycle and I might get an idea to paint it purple. And I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, that could be good for a shoot.\u201d I\u2019ll keep it in my studio and I might use it straight away or in six months it might blend with another idea, or might just build an entire set around it.<\/p>\n

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The post The Technicolor Surrealism of Enda Burke\u2019s Photographic Worlds<\/a> appeared first on PRINT Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the far-off land of Galway, Ireland, there\u2019s a photographer named Enda Burke creating whimsical, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5257,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions\/5257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}