Brooklyn, NY
Biography:
My name is Enid Crow. I think of myself as a stand-up comedian who uses a camera instead of a stage to make the audience laugh. I started taking self-portrait photos when I was a student in the Wendy Ward School of Charm's fashion modeling class in the mid-1980s. For homework, we students were supposed to practice acting like fashion models in magazines. So I posed like models in the cigarette advertisements in Better Homes and Gardens in a studio I made in my parents’ basement by taping construction paper to the faux wood paneling. I took pictures with a shutter release cord connected to my Pentax K1000. Five years later, I went to college to study acting and I started taking pictures of myself disguised as odd characters. Today, most of my self-portraits are social commentary about serious issues like homophobia, worker rights, and feminine beauty standards—but with a comedic twist. Almost all of my photographs are funny on the surface: the characters I play have traits like lazy eyes or unfortunate hairdos and double chins. But my self-portrait photos are motivated by my utter sadness about things like low wages that keep full-time workers in poverty, the conservative cry against gay marriage, and the pressure on women my age to look like teenagers. I think that humor is a powerful way to make issues that are difficult to think about more palatable to people who avoid thinking about them and they recharge individuals who are struggling for change.
Website: www.enidcrow.com
