Ronan Callahan: ‘I want people to think about what masculinity actually means’

As part of the Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme 2025-26, Sigma, together with Photo Museum Ireland, is supporting three emerging photographers in the development of their own photographic practice. One of them is 26-year-old Dublin-based photographer Ronan Callahan. In his work, he explores masculinity, vulnerability and the often unwritten rules that shape the way men behave around one another. Portrait photography is his primary means of doing so.

For his current project, Between Men, Ronan turns his camera, among others, on his own Ultimate Frisbee team, an environment in which physical closeness between men suddenly becomes entirely natural. We meet Ronan at Photo Museum Ireland in Dublin and talk about the power of portrait photography, the need to challenge stereotypes, his love of the physical image, and the unusual combination of medium-format film and the Sigma BF.

Remarkably, Ronan’s love of photography did not begin with portraiture. Quite the opposite: for years, he found photographing people rather intimidating. His first serious introduction to photography came around eleven years ago, more or less by chance. His mother bought a camera for the family, which came with an introductory photography course. She had little interest in attending it herself, so Ronan went in her place.

“That was the first time I learnt how to get out of automatic mode. Shutter speed, aperture, ISO. From that point onwards, I pretty much always had a camera with me.”

Initially, he mainly pointed it at landscapes and nature. As he approached the end of secondary school and was unsure what he wanted to study, Ronan’s mother once again played an important role. She signed him up for an open day at what was then Dublin Institute of Technology, now TU Dublin. Together with his uncle, who taught there, Ronan drove around Dublin taking photographs for his first portfolio.

That portfolio did not immediately earn him a place at art college. Instead, he enrolled on a Post Leaving Certificate course and used the year to discover whether photography really was the future he wanted.

That was where he discovered the studio. And portraiture. “I had always been terrified of photographing people. During that course, I met other photographers and discovered how important portraiture was to them as a way of telling stories. In the end, that became my favourite form of photography.”

After studying photography for around six years in total, Ronan increasingly specialised in portrait and studio photography.

The camera as a way of getting closer

The shift towards portrait photography also says something about Ronan’s personal development. He describes his younger self as someone who was fairly reserved. Photography helped him come out of his shell.

“When I started studying, I met new people and had new experiences. Having a camera in my hands made that easier. When I was younger, I could hide behind it a little as well. Now I use the camera to express myself.”

Most of the people Ronan photographs today are close friends. Photography gives him an opportunity to get to know them in a different way, even people he sees almost every day.

That human connection is essential to his portraits. For Ronan, a good portrait does not begin when he picks up the camera. The conversation beforehand is at least as important.

“When I meet someone for the first time, a conversation like that helps me understand them. How do they speak? How do they hold their body? When are they reserved and when do they begin to open up? That tells me something about how I can photograph them.”

A portrait session therefore becomes a collaboration. And the conversation does not stop when the microphone is switched off or the camera comes out.

Photography makes us look differently

At the same time, Ronan sees photography as an exceptionally powerful medium in today’s world. Images allow us to see and understand events taking place on the other side of the world. But photography can also change the way we look at things much closer to home.

Ronan himself carries a camera almost everywhere. During our conversation, he even has four of them in his bag.

“I never know what I’m going to come across or what I might want to capture.”

He also tries to involve friends who have nothing to do with photography in this way of looking. He once took friends with backgrounds in economics and physics to Paris Photo.

“I have a particular way of looking at the world, but they see things very differently. I find that fascinating. I want to know what they see and what a photograph does to them.”

For Ronan, it is precisely these different interpretations that make photography so interesting. A photograph is never simply that one image contained within four edges. It is only a small fragment of a much larger story.

Putting masculinity under the microscope

That idea brings us to Ronan’s current project. Its most recent working title was Four Blows of the Leather, although the final title has yet to be decided. The project builds on themes that have been present in his work for some time.

During his final years of study, he explored stereotypes surrounding masculinity and vulnerability among young men. He invited men who had never been professionally photographed before into the studio – a sterile and often uncomfortable environment for them – and then tried to create a sense of calm and trust within that space.

“The way we view masculinity has interested me for a very long time.”

In his current work, he explores that subject in greater depth. Among the people he photographs are his own friends and team-mates. In doing so, he noticed something: even close male friends often unconsciously maintain a certain amount of physical distance in everyday life.

“It isn’t a rule that is written down anywhere. But it is there. You can be with your best friends and there is still a certain distance. In the way we stand, the way we hold our bodies and the way we express ourselves.”

When the mask disappears

Things become particularly interesting when Ronan compares those everyday interactions with what happens on the sports field. Ronan plays Ultimate Frisbee, a team sport with what he describes as a particularly inclusive culture. Matches are played without a referee, meaning sportsmanship, integrity and mutual respect play an important role.

Within that sporting environment, Ronan sees something happen. “That mask completely disappears. Nobody worries about physical closeness. There are arms around shoulders, high fives, chest bumps. You can hardly get any closer to one another and nobody judges it.”

As soon as the match is over and the sportswear is replaced by everyday clothes, that distance returns. It is precisely this contrast that fascinates him. Why is physical closeness between men entirely accepted within the context of sport, while the same closeness can suddenly feel uncomfortable outside it?

His photographs combine spontaneous moments around training sessions and matches with more formal portraits of the same men outside that immediate sporting context. Sometimes he photographs them on the sports field, but without the protective context of the team around them.

‘Why should crying be a problem?’

For Ronan, the subject is also personal. At school, he experienced comments about the way he expressed his emotions. “I was more emotional than some of the people around me. My first reaction might be to cry and process what I was feeling that way. Why should there actually be anything wrong with that?”

His project therefore questions the way boys are taught what masculinity is supposed to mean. From clothing and colours to behaviour and showing emotion, Ronan believes all kinds of expectations become associated with gender from a very young age.

He does not describe his project directly as a protest against toxic masculinity. Rather, he sees it as a critique of the way we are raised.

“I want people to think about what masculinity means to them. I think there are problems with the way we learn what masculinity is supposed to be.”

He does not want to prescribe answers. “Above all, I want to start conversations. People should think for themselves and ask: why do we actually do things this way?”

A project that took a completely different direction

Interestingly, the current project began somewhere else entirely. Ronan interviewed people ranging in age from their early twenties to their seventies about disciplinary practices in Irish schools and the impact those experiences had on their lives.

In doing so, he encountered a difficult history of physical, emotional and sexual abuse within parts of the Irish education system. That also brought with it a considerable responsibility: how do you tell such a story without failing to do justice to the experiences of those involved?

“The subject was heavy. I wanted to find a way to visualise it without being disrespectful towards the people who had been affected by it.”

Gradually, the project shifted away from that institutional context and increasingly towards the broader question of how men are shaped and how they have been taught to behave.

For Ronan, that evolution is not a problem. Quite the opposite. “I think I could continue with this forever. There are always new people and new ways of photographing it. It is essentially a story without an ending.”

A photograph is only the beginning

That openness is also reflected in the way Ronan wants his photographs to be viewed. He does not try to place his entire message literally within a single image. “I don’t want to point too explicitly towards the obvious. I want to keep it subtle so that people take the time to think about it.”

That is why selection, sequencing and presentation are also important. An individual portrait may be beautiful, but within a series that same image can take on an entirely different meaning.

Once the work is hanging on a wall, Ronan also relinquishes some of his control. Every visitor brings their own experiences and ideas to the work. He finds that exciting, but also particularly interesting. He does not need everyone to understand his work in exactly the same way. Without different interpretations, there can be no conversation.

A love of the physical image

Alongside taking photographs, Ronan has developed a deep love of the printing process. During his studies, he would sometimes spend entire days in the print room, from ten in the morning until ten at night. “Seeing a photograph on a screen is one thing. But seeing it printed is completely different.”

The choice of paper, pigments, colour and ambient light all influence how a photograph is ultimately experienced. For Ronan, printing is therefore not simply the final technical step, but another creative stage.

“You regain control over how your image looks. It is really another way of expressing your photograph.”

At present, he misses having access to a professional printer, but that is something he wants to change in the future. For him, the physical image remains an essential part of photography.

Analogue and digital

That love of the tangible is also reflected in his current project, for which Ronan uses analogue and digital photography side by side. For the analogue part, he works, among other cameras, with a fully mechanical Mamiya RB67 medium-format camera. At the same time, he carried the Sigma BF with him on many of his shoots. “More than half of the project was photographed with the Sigma.”

The BF proved particularly practical when travelling to tournaments. Its compact and lightweight design created an interesting contrast with his substantial medium-format camera. “The BF is completely different from the Mamiya, but that is exactly why they complemented each other so well.”

Initially, he had to get used to the absence of a viewfinder. “I kept catching myself lifting it to my eye and then thinking: oh yes, of course.”

One feature that fitted surprisingly well with his way of working was the range of aspect ratios. Ronan had already been cropping his digital photographs to ratios such as 4:5 or 6:7 to make them visually consistent with medium-format film. With the BF, he could set those ratios directly in-camera while shooting.

This allowed digital and analogue images to sit much more naturally alongside one another within the same project. He does not see the two media as competitors.

“With film, you never know exactly how it is going to turn out. Sometimes it simply doesn’t work. That’s why I often shoot both. I’ll make a portrait on film and then digitally, change something and start again. In the end, I look at which image comes closest to what I want to say.”

Learning to let go of your ‘darlings’

At the time of our conversation, Ronan is approaching the final selection for the exhibition. At that point, around fifteen images remain. And with that begins perhaps one of the most difficult parts of any long-term photographic project: leaving out good photographs.

“There can be really strong images that simply don’t fit within the context of this series. That’s difficult. But perhaps they will work for something else later.”

The monthly conversations with Photo Museum Ireland’s Curator Darren Campion have helped him with that process. Feedback from the other Sigma Talents, Inés Pesado and Ewan Power, has also proved valuable. Sometimes they noticed connections within his work that Ronan himself had not seen.

“As soon as we put the prints on the table or hung them on the wall, they saw things I hadn’t noticed myself. Having extra pairs of eyes helps you understand more clearly what it is you’re actually making.”

He now compares his project to an open circle. “It can continue to grow. Will that circle ever be completely closed? No. And that is exactly what is so enjoyable about photography. It never ends.”

Giving yourself space not to photograph

Not every month of the programme was equally productive. At one point, several planned shoots fell through and Ronan had barely any new work to show.
“For a while, I felt like a failure. I thought: I have nothing new.”

The conversations within the programme helped him realise that this too is part of being an artist. There are periods when you photograph every day and others when almost nothing happens. “The biggest challenge was really accepting that sometimes things just move slowly.”

Looking back through older material also made him realise that photographs which had seemed out of place in the series months earlier could suddenly acquire meaning later on.

Sigma Talents as a bridge into professional practice

For Ronan, this is precisely where much of the value of the Sigma Talents Scholarship Programme lies. After six years of studying photography, the structure of education suddenly disappeared. “You go from constantly receiving feedback and support to nothing. That’s quite scary.”

The programme gave him something to work towards again, but with greater freedom than he had during his studies. Participants received mentoring, access to Photo Museum Ireland’s facilities, workshops covering areas including funding, darkroom practice and scanning, opportunities to present their work to curators, and access to Sigma cameras and lenses.

For Ronan, it therefore quite literally became a bridge between education and independent professional practice.

He still sometimes finds it difficult to believe that he was selected. The news reached him in the car park of a gym.

“I was sitting in my car and just had to process it for a moment. Then I called my mum, my dad, everyone. I couldn’t believe it was actually happening.”

The mentoring and the opportunity to present his work to international curators have made the past year particularly valuable, he says. He does not see feedback as criticism designed to hold him back, but as an opportunity to discover something he has not yet seen himself. “I’m still learning. Feedback helps you grow.”

Without the programme, he would probably still have made the project. But not in the same way. “It would have looked very different and probably progressed much more slowly. The programme really bridged that gap after I finished studying.”

A circle that can remain open

Perhaps that idea best captures Ronan’s development as a photographer. He first picked up a camera because his mother did not feel like attending an introductory photography course. He photographed landscapes because the thought of photographing people terrified him. Today, it is precisely the encounter with other people that lies at the heart of almost everything he creates.

His current project is about masculinity, but ultimately it is just as much about human closeness. About the distance we unconsciously maintain from one another, the masks we wear and the moments when we allow ourselves to take them off.

Ronan does not expect to find a definitive answer to the question of what masculinity is. Nor does he need to. Because perhaps that is precisely where the power of his photography lies: not in answering the question, but in creating the space to finally ask it.