[The Guardian] Photographer Enda Burke and the theatre of family lockdown

Photographer Enda Burke and the theatre of family lockdown

In lockdown in Galway City, Burke focused on the bright side – creating gaudily retro, deadpan tableaux with his parents in all the starring roles

Enda Burke spent lockdown with his parents in Galway City on the west coast of Ireland. As a street photographer, with street life on hold, he decided to focus on the people closest to hand. The result is an award-winning series, Homebound With My Parents, which turns lockdown into theatre. His luminously exuberant colourscape – candyfloss pink, sunflower yellow and turquoise – offers “an antidote to the gloom of Covid”. It’s a bid for “vibrancy, humour, a form of escapism”. To pull this bright new world off, Burke turned the family home upside down and meticulously constructed each set himself. He ordered his retro items online, put up wallpaper and drilled his parents into their new lockdown roles.

When I cross-question him about how they reacted to this hijacking, the 33-year-old reports that his parents are “very easygoing”, and says they had many laughs together. “I said to them, ‘You’re being actors – this is acting and people really love that.’” In an introduction to his series, he reveals a fascination with the “monotony associated with family life during the pandemic”, but life in Galway City during the creation of these photographs seems to have been anything but monotonous.

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