William Wegman

Born in 1943 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, William Wegman received a B.F.A. in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston in 1965 and an M.F.A. in painting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1967. In the fall of 1970 he moved to Southern California where he taught for one year at California State College, Long Beach.

It was while he was in Long Beach that Wegman got his dog, a Weimaraner who he named Man Ray, and began a long and fruitful collaboration. Man Ray, known in the art world and beyond for his endearing deadpan presence, became a central figure in Wegman’s photographs and videotapes. When Man Ray died in 1982 he was named “Man of the Year” by the Village Voice. It was not until 1986 that Wegman got a new dog, Fay Ray, and another collaboration began marked by Wegman’s extensive use of the Polaroid 20 x 24 camera. With the birth of Fay’s litter in 1989, Wegman’s cast grew.

Wegman has created film and video works for Saturday Night Live and Nickelodeon and his video segments for Sesame Street have appeared regularly since 1989. In 1995, Wegman’s film The Hardly Boys was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Wegman has been commissioned to create images for a wide range of projects including a fashion campaign for Acne, banners for the Metropolitan Opera and covers for numerous publications including The New Yorker, Wallpaper and, most recently, French Vogue. Wegman has appeared on The Tonight Show both with Johnny Carson and with Jay Leno, The David Letterman Show and The Colbert Report.

William Wegman lives in New York and Maine where he continues to paint, draw, make videos and take photographs with his dog Flo.