Enda Bowe’s works are being presented through exhibitions as well as publications of photographic monographs.
Enda’s work has been exhibited in galleries including Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Red hook Gallery, New York, The Visual Centre of Contemporary Art, Carlow, National Portrait Gallery, London, Fotohof, Salzburg, Gallery of Photography, Dublin, and Fotomuseum, Winterthur. He published four books; Coast, Kilburn Cherry, At Mirrored River, and This Thing l Want, I Know Not What.
He received awards including the Zurich Portrait Prize from the National Gallery Ireland, Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize from the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Brigid Skiold Artist Award from the Whitechapel Gallery, London.
The photographer, as his works are clearly proving, are concerned with storytelling and the research for light and beauty in what is ordinary.
About ‘Clapton Blossom’ – words by Enda Bowe:
Set on a housing estate in East London, Clapton Blossom is a celebration of humanity and social diversity at a time when walls are being built between nations and political dialogue encourages to mistrust each other.
He is inspired by the series of ten short films by late Polish Director, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog, in which each film portrays a different resident of the same housing estate in Warsaw. Kieślowski illustrates how, although characters do not know each other, their lives become subtly intertwined by facing emotional dilemmas that are deeply personal as well as universally human.
These portraits reverse the standard narrative of estates thought as grim grey urban places, showing the evident beauty and vulnerability in each person photographed, the back of a head, eyes closed, an open, unguarded expression, hinting at the universality of human experience. The portraits celebrate multiculturalism, the beauty and the heart of humanity.
This concept is further symbolised by the cherry tree which acts as the connecting point at the center of the estate, intersecting the overlapping lives of local people who experience that every day or eventually see from their windows. The explosion of blossom reminds us of the democratic and leveling beauty of nature. Enhancing the lives of everyone who passes by it, connecting, giving, it does not ask who we are nor where we are from. The tree and flowers evoke a psychic commonality. Highlighting the beauty in nature, we are asked to see the beauty in ourselves and in each other.
