Laurie Toby Edison

Laurie Toby Edison
Laurie Toby Edison in 2003
Born	(1942-03-05)March 5, 1942 New York City, United States
Nationality	American
Known for	Photography
Notable work	Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes (1994) Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes (2004) Women of Japan (2007)

External video

"Meditations on the Body" at the Osaka National Museum of Art, first of three parts, 2001 on YouTube

"Meditations on the Body" at the Osaka National Museum of Art, second of three parts, 2001 on YouTube

"Meditations on the Body" at the Osaka National Museum of Art, third of three parts, 2001 on YouTube

Laurie Toby Edison (born March 5, 1942) is an American portrait photographer active in the feminist art, queer activist and art, and fat acceptance movements. Edison's work is black-and-white fine art photography, with an underlying social change message, which she often phrases as "making the invisible visible.” She has published two books of photographs: a series of nude environmental portraits of fat women (Women En Large), and a series of nude environmental portraits of a very diverse cross-section of men (Familiar Men), plus a photo essay of clothed environmental portraits of women living in Japan (Women of Japan).

She and her writing partner Debbie Notkin blog about body image and related topics at Body Impolitic. A long-time resident of San Francisco, she lives in the Mission District. Edison identifies as Jewish, bisexual, and queer.

Edison was born in 1942 in New York City in a Jewish family of artists and designers. Living in Jewish neighborhoods as a child, she noted Holocaust survivors with number tattoos and was "deeply affected" by photographs of naked dead bodies from concentration camps. She was influenced by the beat movement, abstract expressionism, and jazz music.

Edison attended Wellesley College from 1958-59. She has two daughters from her two marriages who she says have shaped her work.

Edison's early art was primarily jewelry. She co-owned jewelry stores in Sarasota, Florida and Provincetown, Massachusetts during the 1960s. She began selling sculptural jewelry with science fiction designs in 1969. She joined the feminist movement in the 1970s and moved to San Francisco - an epicenter of feminism - in 1980. In the 1980s, she taught herself photography to use as an art form with social activism.