Ewan Power: ‘Photography is as much a part of me as my left hand’

For young Irish photographer Ewan Power, photography is no longer a conscious choice. It is simply part of who he is. With his analogue camera, he documents his own life, his friends and the queer community around him - intimately, personally and without trying to make reality appear more beautiful or spectacular than it is. At the same time, photography helped him process the sudden loss of his father. As part of the Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme 2025-26, he brings these different threads together in his project I Can't Do This Alone.

We meet Ewan at Photo Museum Ireland in Dublin and talk about grief, love, representation and why, for him, a photograph should never be more important than his relationship with the person in it.

Ewan is 24 and grew up in Ireland. Photography has, in a sense, always been there. As a child, he photographed his family and the people around him. During his teenage years, he became increasingly interested in analogue photography.

“I mainly used photography to document my life, my friends and the people around me. It felt very natural. But for a long time, I didn’t see it as my ‘work’ at all. It was simply something I enjoyed doing.”

That changed while studying Fine Art Media at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. During an Erasmus exchange in the Netherlands, his tutors saw his photographs and pointed out that this was where his real strength lay.
“They said: this is really good, you could do more with this. I had never looked at it that way myself.”

Until then, Ewan had explored various creative disciplines, including printmaking and fashion. Following that encouragement, he decided to focus entirely on photography.

“I changed direction in my final year and completely immersed myself in photography. From that point onwards, I just fell more and more in love with it.”

His approach to photography is largely self-taught. His education gave him a theoretical and conceptual foundation, but technically, he taught himself most of what he knows. According to Ewan, this has been instrumental in shaping his visual language: technique is secondary to the need to document his own life.

The camera as a way of connecting

Ask Ewan what photography means to him and the conversation quickly stops being about images and becomes one about people.

“Photography has always been a way for me to connect. Photographing someone feels like a way of reaching out to that person. As though you can talk to someone without actually having to say anything.”

As a child, he did not always find social interaction easy. A camera helped him bridge that distance. At the same time, photography makes all the noise around him temporarily disappear.

“Through the camera, the world becomes smaller. You are completely present with whatever is happening in front of you at that moment. My entire photographic practice is really about being present.”

That idea, being present, runs like a thread throughout his work.

If you can photograph it, it existed

According to Ewan, photography also has an important social power: representation.

“If something can be photographed, it is real. It existed, because it happened.”

For him personally, this became clear at an early age. As a queer teenager, he saw very few images in everyday life in which he could recognise himself. Photography showed him that another reality was possible.

The work of German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans made a particularly strong impression. In the 1990s, Tillmans became known for his photographs of LGBT culture, young people and club life. “I was fifteen or sixteen when I saw his work. I saw a completely different world from my own. A world that was exciting and vibrant. I thought: I want to be part of that. And because of those photographs, I knew that world really existed.”

For Ewan, that is where a particular power of photography lies. A photograph can show someone that another life, another identity or another future is possible.

“If you can see something, you can believe in it.”

The need to tell your own story

Especially today, Ewan believes it is important for queer photographers to document their own lives and communities. “As an Irish queer photographer, I think that is particularly important. Homosexuality was only decriminalised here in the 1990s. So we have only had the opportunity to openly document our own lives for a relatively short period of time.”

According to Ewan, there is still relatively little photographic work in Ireland that tells the queer experience from within. At the same time, he sees pressure on queer communities increasing internationally.

That is why he believes it is important for people to document their own histories.

“A great deal is said about queer people. But someone looking in from the outside doesn’t live our experience. That’s why we also need to document our own lives. It becomes part of our history.”

He does not explicitly describe his photography as activist. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that there is inevitably an element of activism within it.

“Simply by shifting a perspective and showing the world from a queer point of view, perhaps you change, even slightly, the way someone sees that world.”

The relationship comes before the photograph

Ewan’s photography is strongly diaristic. He photographs his friends, loved ones and the places of which he himself is a part. That allows him to get close. But for him, that trust can never be taken for granted.

“I always put the relationship before the photograph. That is what allows my images to feel intimate and real. I don’t take those photographs just to get a good picture at any cost.”

That is especially important in the spaces in which he photographs. A home, club or party can be a safe environment where queer people are able to be completely themselves. The presence of a camera can suddenly disrupt that sense of safety.

“If someone is photographing in that environment, you need to know that they are doing it from a place of love, care and compassion. Not because they want to make a spectacular image.”

With his access to that world, Ewan could easily create photographs that might appear sensational or provocative to outsiders. But that does not interest him.

“I want to show the other side. The tenderness, love and intimacy. Ultimately, we are all simply trying to exist, to love and to care for one another. That is what my work is about.”

Grief as a turning point

That focus on being present took on a much deeper meaning when Ewan’s father died suddenly almost two years ago.

“We were best friends. I loved him enormously.”

It happened shortly before Ewan began his final year at university. His graduation project, When I Go Out to the Water, I Can Feel You Here With Me, became a way of trying to understand the loss. He photographed places where his father had once been, places now defined precisely by his absence.

“I was trying to learn how to live with that absence. I photographed places and moments that felt heavy because someone was no longer there.”

The project he is now creating as part of the Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme is, in part, a continuation of that work. But his perspective has changed. Whereas his earlier work centred mainly on who was no longer there, I Can't Do This Alone increasingly focuses on who and what still remains.

“Grief made me realise how important the moment you have right now is. Every day, every moment you have with someone is valuable.”

Ewan hesitates to say that the loss made him ‘stronger’. More than anything, it changed him.

“During the first year, I mainly looked at the world through the idea that he was no longer here. Now that has shifted towards: but this is still here. These are the people I still have. And I need to cherish those moments.”

Photography as medicine

Photography played an important role in processing that loss. Ewan had never previously lost an immediate family member and initially had little idea what to do with his feelings.

“Photography became the way I understood how I was grieving.”

He went outside and took photographs. Not with the intention of making good images, but simply because photography helped him to be present.

“It was only when I looked back at the photographs later that I began to understand what I was feeling. It helped me recognise the weight of that grief. Without photography, I honestly don’t know how I would have made it through that period.”

Photography became, as we describe it during our conversation, a kind of medicine.

“Absolutely. It was therapeutic.”

Why analogue?

Ewan shoots all of his personal work on film. It fits his desire to remain present in the moment.

“When you shoot analogue, you can’t immediately look at a screen and think: let me take that again, but better. You take the photograph and then it’s done. The camera comes back down and you’re back in the moment.”

For someone photographing such intimate situations, that matters. He does not want the camera to constantly stand between him and the people around him.

“Photography can be intrusive. You take out a camera and capture a moment. There is something transactional about that. So I try to work in a way that allows me to photograph raw and vulnerable moments without my presence with a camera taking over the situation.”

He has his colour film developed by a lab, while he does much of the scanning and digitising himself.

I Can't Do This Alone

The working title of Ewan’s current project says a great deal: I Can't Do This Alone. The work is about his queer experience, but equally about loss, grief, love and the people around him. It began with absence, but gradually developed into an ode to presence.

Through the project, Ewan also wants to show that grief does not have a single form.

“If you look at art and photography about grief, it is often dark and heavy. Understandably so, of course. But there isn’t just one way to grieve. My experience is very personal, but perhaps my perspective can help someone else too.”

A profound loss does not have to mean the end of everything, he believes.

“Life has commas and full stops. Experiencing something terrible doesn’t mean your own life is over.”

His project is therefore not only about loss, but also about the beauty of what continues to exist afterwards.

Beauty in the everyday

Ewan rarely looks for that beauty in grand gestures. Many of his photographs show people from behind, a posture, a subtle gesture or a seemingly ordinary moment.

“I don’t photograph something because everyone else thinks it is beautiful. I photograph everyday things in which I see beauty.”

For him, that too is at the heart of his work. A photograph of a loved one in bed does not have to be an explicit statement. Yet such an image can say something about love, sexuality, intimacy and relationships.

“There are layers within a photograph. I don’t have to explain everything literally.”

Above all, he hopes his images can show people what is possible – not only other queer people, but a wider audience too.

“I hope people see my work and think: so this exists. These experiences are real and valuable. And if someone is going through something similar, then what they are feeling is valuable too.”

One big project called life

Ewan now considers the work he created during the residency to be complete. The final selection for the exhibition is still being made, but photographically, he feels this phase has reached a full stop.

Or perhaps, as he puts it himself, only a comma.

“My work is so diaristic that my next project will ultimately be about my own life and experiences again. In that sense, all my work is really one big project: my life.”

And that project is far from finished. “It will only be over when I’m no longer here.”

Ewan does not have a grand career plan for his future as a photographer either. Above all, he wants to continue living, travelling, meeting people and taking photographs. “Photography goes everywhere with me. It is as much a part of me as my left hand.”

Recognition or commercial success is not his primary goal. “If I can live my life in a way that makes me happy, grateful and proud, and my photography reflects that, then that is enough. I make the work for myself, for the people who appear in it and for my community.”

Sigma Talents: space to continue growing

The Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme 2025-26 is a joint initiative by Sigma and Photo Museum Ireland, supporting three emerging photographic artists in Ireland as they make the transition from education into professional practice. Participants receive a €2,000 development bursary, access to Sigma cameras and lenses, mentoring and monthly review sessions, as well as access to Photo Museum Ireland’s production and darkroom facilities. The work of all three photographers will be presented as part of TALENTS 2026 in Dublin in autumn 2026.

For Ewan, the programme came at an important moment: immediately after graduating. “It has been incredibly important to me. After university, the structure you are used to suddenly disappears. Here, I was given a place again where I could make work, talk about it and continue developing it.”

The guidance from Photo Museum Ireland also helped him look at his own photography differently. He regularly worried about whether the highly personal meaning of his images would be clear enough to outsiders. During the residency, he learnt to trust his work more.

“What I photograph is my experience. And that experience is valid. It doesn’t have to be completely readable to everyone in order to have meaning.”

The relationship with the other two selected photographers, Inés Pesado and Ronan Callahan, also became important. Ewan and Inés in particular formed a close friendship almost immediately. “We barely knew each other beforehand. From the very first event, we pretty much immediately had the feeling: we’re going to be friends. Now we travel together, cook together, go to festivals and spend an incredible amount of time together.”

The Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme therefore gave Ewan not only artistic development, but also something that fits remarkably well with the very heart of his photography: new human connections.

From analogue to the Sigma BF

Although Ewan shoots his personal work entirely on film, the programme also gave him the opportunity to work with the Sigma BF. He found the camera particularly valuable for documenting his own exhibitions and those of fellow artists.

“At first, I had to get used to the minimalist controls, but after that I really enjoyed using it. It is very clean and straightforward to work with. And I hardly had to do anything to the images afterwards.”

He also appreciated its compact nature. “It is so portable and easy to carry around. For the work I was doing with it, it simply made my life a lot easier.”

Perhaps that provides a fitting parallel with Ewan’s analogue photography. However different the two ways of working may be technically, ultimately he is looking for a camera that does not come between him and life.

For Ewan Power, photography does not begin with technique, or even with the final image. It begins with being present. With people. With trust. And with the understanding that a seemingly ordinary moment, once you truly stop to look at it, can be priceless.