Clay Enos

Clay Enos Bio

Clay Enos refuses to be pigeonholed into any one category of photography. From a portrait session with Sting to a print campaign for Coca Cola to glue sniffing children on the streets of Cambodia, Enos consistently captures moments that feel both real and transcendent. Always spontaneous and edgy, Enos’ unique style shines through his commercial, editorial and fine art photographs.

Enos views his camera as an extension of himself and takes it with him everywhere he goes. Rather than snapping shots from the sidelines, Enos fully engages his subjects. This interactive style is most evident in his gritty Night series. Shooting in bars and clubs, Enos’ discovers dark sexy images of naughty nightlife. As is true for much of his work, these photographs would not have been possible if he were not an active participant on the scene. Enos’ Night photographs are straight and uncropped.

Enos proves his eye for portraits in his first large scale photography project, Streetstudio. Launched in 2000, Streetstudio involves shooting portraits of random passersby on the streets of New York. By bringing his studio to the street Enos gains access to the most remarkable faces in the city. This access combined with his sheer enthusiasm and friendly rapport, allow Enos to create quiet poignant portraits of everyday people that reflect the myriad beauty and electric spirit of New York City.

Since the inception of Streetstudio, Enos has expanded the project to other cities that include London, Paris, Amsterdam, Black Rock City, Bangkok and Berlin. To date, the Streetstudio collection contains well over twenty thousand portraits and the project is still going strong.

Enos enjoys the fast pace of shooting on the fly. His relaxed style allows him to be creative and resourceful with whatever he is shooting. Enos’ recent commercial clients include Red Stag Bourbon, Coca Cola, Virgin Mobile, TBS, WaMu and Jaguar. He has photographed over 50 popular celebrity musicians including Kid rock, Dave Matthews, Avril Lavigne, 50 Cent, Ludacris, and Robert Plant.

When Enos is not riding his bicycle on the streets of New York he is roaming the globe discovering memorable photographs of far away places (48 countries so far). Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers and the Lemelson Foundation have tapped him to document their innovative development projects worldwide. And Tom Ang featured his travel photography in Digital Photography Master Class published by DK. He speaks Spanish and French, has no problem with coach-class, and sleeps like a baby on airplanes.

Director Zack Snyder hired Clay to document his film adaptation of Watchmen for Warner Brothers. That effort resulted in three coffee-table books to be published in 2009; one of which Watchmen Portraits is exclusively dedicated to 220 on-set Streetstudio-style portraits made during production. Recent covers of Entertainment Weekly and Empire Magazine have featured that work as well.

Clay’s most recent foundation work found him traveling around East Africa (Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya) documenting the development work of The Jane Goodall Institute and the Lemelson Foundation in developing sustainable water and forest projects with coffee farmers. The work itself involved documenting coffee farming practices, co-op meetings, portraits of farmers and their families, as well as key players in the development projects. The images ranged from Chimpanzees in their preserves to big industrial coffee plants in Kenya.

Enos has a BFA in Film, Photography and Visual Arts from Ithaca College. He has studied with the VII photographers Jim Nachtwey, Gary Knight and Antonin Kratochvil.

The web is Enos’ favorite vehicle to share his work which he displays generously through his on-line portfolio. His website, clayenos.com was given top honors in PDN Pix Digital and PDN Design Award in 2004. His on-line portfolio can be viewed at clayenos.com and his blog “Make Pictures” at blog.clayenos.com.