‘A stranger came up and asked if I did a bunch of LSD with my parents and watched a load of Wes Anderson films’

After featuring on this year’s Leaving Cert exam, Galway photographer Enda Burke’s kitsch visual art is reaching new audiences. Here, he talks about sourcing the props for his quirky sets, how he captured his best-selling nun photo and turning his parents into local celebrities

'Nuns on the run’. Photo: Enda Burke

Katie Byrne

Enda Burke had to laugh when his artwork turned up on the 2024 Leaving Cert art: visual studies exam paper earlier this month. A self-described “class clown”, he was far from a model student during his own school days in Coláiste na Coiribe, Co Galway.

“I had this maths grind teacher when I was in school and he sent me a picture [of the paper] when the exam was over,” he tells me. Was he proud to discover that his work had made it into the exam paper? “Yes, but it’s more funny than anything else…”