Inés Pesado Catrufo: photography as a way of being seen

As part of the Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme 2025-26, Sigma Ireland, together with Photo Museum Ireland, is supporting three emerging photographers in the development of new work. One of them is Spanish-Irish photographer and visual artist Inés Pesado Catrufo. Her photography explores intimacy, identity, love and the need to be seen. In her current project, she turns the camera on her own queer community, and, inevitably, on herself.

We meet Inés at Photo Museum Ireland in Dublin to talk about photography as a safe space, the responsibility that comes with being a photographer, and a project that turned out to be far more personal than she initially expected.

From pharmacy to photography

Looking at Inés Pesado’s work today, it might be difficult to imagine that her life initially seemed destined to take a very different path. Born in northern Spain, Inés first studied pharmacy. At the time, photography was something she did mainly for herself.

“Like so many people, I simply started with my phone. I was eighteen or nineteen and took photographs for fun. It was almost a way of escaping for a while.”

Later, a friend gave her her first analogue 35mm camera. She still owns it and continues to use it regularly. Today, Inés works both digitally and with film. In those early days, photography was primarily a way of capturing the beauty around her.

“I found it almost magical that I had this small object that allowed me to preserve a moment in time. At first, I barely felt part of the process myself. It was as though I was simply pressing a button.”

That changed after she moved to Ireland. She realised that her future did not lie in pharmacy and decided to return to education, this time to study photography. She has since completed a BA in Photographic Media at Griffith College Dublin, following earlier studies in Photography and Digital Imaging at the National College of Art & Design. Her work has already been exhibited both in Ireland and internationally.

Photography as a way of understanding the world

As her education progressed, her relationship with photography changed too. It was no longer simply about beauty, but increasingly about meaning. “Photography, for me, is a way of connecting with the world around me. It is my way of existing in this world and perhaps also a way of being seen. I use photography to understand and process my own feelings and experiences.”

A photograph makes something tangible, she explains. A feeling, an encounter or an event that is fleeting is given a physical form, something you can return to and engage with again later.

“At some point, I realised that many of my projects actually came from questions I didn’t dare ask myself. I was looking for answers in other people, when ultimately those were questions I needed to ask myself.”

For Inés, this makes photography not only an artistic medium, but also a deeply personal journey.

The camera is never neutral

At the same time, she is acutely aware of the power a photographer holds. For Inés, the strength of photography lies primarily in its ability to make something visible. “With a camera, you can show that something exists. You can make visible a reality that may otherwise have remained hidden from other people. A photograph also becomes a trace: proof that someone, something or a particular experience existed.”

But that power comes with responsibility.

“A camera is not neutral, and neither are you as a photographer. You are constantly making choices. What do you include within the frame? What do you leave out? What do you emphasise? You can never tell the complete story.”

For that very reason, she believes photography can be used both positively and negatively. At the same time, she sees enormous potential in using photography to make visible stories and experiences that have long been underrepresented.

Love, community and the need to be seen

That idea is central to the project Inés is developing as part of the Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme. For the first time, her own queer identity is explicitly at the heart of her work. “Queerness has of course always been part of my photography, simply because it is part of who I am and the world I live in. But this is the first time it has really become the subject of my work.”

She photographs her friends, her housemates and her everyday surroundings, creating a story about love, community, resistance, resilience and connection.

“When I document my own life and the lives of my friends, for me it is about love, community, resistance, and resilience. It is about the need to be seen and tell our own story while connecting with one another.”

At the same time, Inés sees a tension within that need. On the one hand, there is the desire to show yourself fully and express who you are. On the other, there are moments when people want, or need, to withdraw.

“That tension between wanting to be seen and sometimes having to hide yourself really fascinates me.”

Not answers, but questions

The original idea for the project was broader. Inés wanted to play with concepts such as truth and authenticity and explore what can actually be considered ‘real’ within photography. Documentary images would be interspersed with staged situations.

“I never really want to provide answers with my photography. I want to raise questions.”

She therefore experiments with non-linear narratives and the boundary between documentary and fiction. Photography, she believes, offers unique possibilities for doing so.

“You can stage something that perhaps isn’t real at all. But once you have performed and photographed it, it has happened. Suddenly, there is a photograph of it. I find that fascinating. Photography becomes a kind of playground in which you can create alternative realities.”

As the project developed, its focus gradually shifted. The contrast between being seen and hiding yourself became increasingly important. The role of her friends in front of the camera changed too. Some photographs feel almost observational and documentary in nature, while in others the people portrayed look directly back at the camera.

“At that point, they are no longer passive subjects. A dialogue emerges between the person being photographed, the camera, the photographer and, ultimately, the viewer.”

When your subject is also your life

That close collaboration also made the project more complicated. Inés is not photographing outsiders. These are her friends, her housemates and her community,  people whose lives are deeply intertwined with her own.

For that reason, she spoke extensively with the people she photographed. How did they want to be seen? Which images could be used? Where were their boundaries?

“At times, it felt like an enormous responsibility. Ultimately, I am making decisions about how another person is being portrayed.”

Relationships and friendships also changed during the course of the project. Photographs that felt right at one moment could become painful a few months later.

“I have had to let go of images that I personally loved very much because someone no longer felt comfortable with them. They represented a moment that had become too painful.”

It was an important lesson: the value of a photograph does not automatically outweigh the wellbeing of the person depicted in it.

Having the courage to be vulnerable yourself

Perhaps the greatest challenge, however, lay elsewhere. Inés asked her friends to make themselves vulnerable in front of her camera, but gradually realised that she did not always allow herself that same vulnerability.

“I was asking a great deal from the people in front of my camera, while I wasn’t showing myself completely. At some point I realised: how can I ask someone else to be so vulnerable if I’m afraid of being seen myself?”

Once again, the project returned to a pattern she had recognised in her earlier photography: questions she was trying to answer through other people ultimately turned out to be questions she needed to ask herself.

She also discovered how complicated it can be to photograph your own surroundings as an insider. She lives in a shared house filled with art and traces of the people who have lived there over the years. To visitors, it is a remarkable environment. To Inés, it has become so familiar that she sometimes no longer notices what makes it special.

“When you are somewhere every day, you become blind to it. That is one of the difficulties of making work about your own life.”

And there is another boundary: where does the project end and life begin?

“I want to be present in my own friendships. I don’t want to exploit my life to the point where I’m no longer part of it myself and I’m only ever looking at everything through a viewfinder.”

A project that began with pure joy

The origins of the project lie in a period when Inés felt exceptionally happy. After moving into her current home, she became increasingly connected to her queer community.

“We were together, we cooked together, we loved each other. I had never experienced so much beauty and love around me. It almost felt like a fairy tale.”

She describes that period as a feeling of queer joy and euphoria.

“I felt as though I had finally found my people. As if I had spent my entire life searching for a community and had finally found it.”

But a project that begins at an emotional high cannot remain there forever. Relationships change, friendships evolve and everyday life eventually takes over again.

“The project began on an enormous high. And when there is a high, eventually there will also be a low.”

It was precisely there that Inés discovered a new layer to the project. It is not only the euphoria that is meaningful, but also what comes afterwards.

‘The Ones Who Love Are Born of God’

Even the project’s working title is connected to her friends. A close friend had written a passage from All About Love by Bell Hooks on the wall of her room. The words stayed with Inés and led to the title: The Ones Who Love Are Born of God.

For Inés, this is not literally about religion.

“God, for me in this case, is more of a metaphor. It is about faith in our community, in the power of the love we have for one another and in the way we support each other.”

In that sense, the title touches on the essence of the project: after a long search, finally feeling that you belong somewhere and that you have found people with whom you can truly be yourself.

No finishing point

Ask Inés whether she is satisfied with the final result and the answer is simple: there is no final result yet.

“It is an ongoing project. I’ve had to accept that what I originally envisioned isn’t fully there yet. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. This is what the project is right now.”

She wants to allow the work to rest and return to it later. During the residency, she also discovered something fundamental about her own way of working: she is probably not a photographer who makes short-term projects.

“I think I need time to understand things. Perhaps I’m someone who needs to work on a project for years. And that’s fine. It takes as long as it needs to take.”

What Sigma Talents means to Inés

The Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme was established by Sigma and Photo Museum Ireland to help emerging photographic artists in Ireland make the transition from education to professional practice. Three selected artists receive a €2,000 development bursary, access to Sigma cameras and lenses, the facilities of Photo Museum Ireland, and guidance from curators and industry professionals. Their work will be presented in autumn 2026 as part of the TALENTS 2026 group exhibition in Dublin.

For Inés, however, the significance of the programme extends far beyond equipment, funding or an exhibition. Above all, the guidance has helped her gain a better understanding of herself as a photographer.

“This year has forced me to think about why I photograph, where my work comes from, how my practice works and how I deal with fear and uncertainty. If that is the most important thing I take away from this project, then that alone is enormously valuable.”

The support from Photo Museum Ireland has also meant a great deal to her. Particularly at moments when she felt stuck or began doubting the project, the conversations helped her move forwards.

“Sometimes I would come in feeling that the project simply wasn’t working at all. But I always left with hope. With the feeling that there was time, that I could keep going and that eventually it would lead somewhere.”

For Inés, it is also important that an organisation such as Sigma and an institution such as Photo Museum Ireland not only support emerging photographers, but also create space for the stories those photographers themselves want to tell.

“It’s not only about supporting me as a queer artist. You are supporting me while I make work about my queerness. That means an incredible amount to me.”

Perhaps that is ultimately where her photography and the Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme come together: in the possibility of creating space for stories that need to be told. Not by deciding for others what their story should be, but by giving people the space to make themselves visible.

For Inés, that search begins with her friends, her community and her camera. But ultimately, it also begins with herself.