Biography

Enda Bowe's work is concerned with cinematic narratives and the search for light and beauty in the ordinary. He presents his work through exhibition and the publication of photographic monographs.

Influences in his work include writers John McGahern and Carson McCullers, poet Liz Berry, and directors Lynne Ramsey, Eve Arnold, Lenny Abrahamson, and Shane Meadows.

To date Bowe’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums including the Victoria & Albert Museum , London, Red Hook Gallery, New York, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, the National Portrait Gallery, London, Fotohof, Salzburg, Dortmund U, Dortmund, The Gallery of Photography, Dublin and The Visual Centre Of Contemporary Art, Ireland.

Bowe won the Zürich Portrait Prize 2019, National Gallery, Ireland. He received the Taylor Wessing Portrait Second Prize on consecutive years, 2018 and 2019, National Portrait Gallery, London.

His collection of work ‘At Mirrored River’ received the international Solas Photography Award 2015 and was nominated for the Prix Pictet Award 2016 and the Deutsche Borse Foundation Photography Prize 2016.

Love’s Fire Song was exhibited The Gallery of Photography Ireland and was nominated for the Prix Pictet Award 2021 and the Deutsche Borse Foundation Photography Prize 2022. The exhibition was nominated by Frieze as one of the top ten European exhibitions of 2020 alongside Steve McQueen and other respected artists.

Bowe recently worked with Lenny Abrahamson as unit stills photographer on the acclaimed TV series ‘Normal People’, and collaborated again on Abrahamson’s new project ‘Conversations With Friends’ in 2021. In 2021, Enda also was commissioned by A24 for the feature film titled ‘God’s Creatures’ starring Emily Watson and Paul Mescal.

"I had the great pleasure and good fortune of meeting Enda Bowe around the time ‘Adam & Paul’ came out. He got in touch because he liked the film and felt a kinship there with his own work. I remember the feeling when he shared his images with me - just an awareness of depth and truth and above all a kind of perfect tender empathy and humanity. I’ve returned to his photographs often, when I feel the need to be reminded of that extraordinary relationship that can exist between the looker and the looked-at. Enda’s subjects are responding to him as a very special, deeply empathetic human being and somehow his camera captures that response and with it something essential about that person.”
Lenny Abrahamson, 2020

Enda is a committed artist who approaches both commissioned and personal projects with the same passion, dedication and attention to detail. He is from Ireland and lives and works in London and Dublin.