William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
The artist and photographer William Wegman is best known for his images featuring dogs, specifically his own beloved Weimaraners, in various costumes and poses. Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, he attended Massachusetts College of Art, where he received a BFA in painting, and two years later he received an MFA in Painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While teaching at California State University, Long Beach, he began photographing his first Weimaraner (named Man Ray, after the artist Man Ray). In the 1970s he began to experiment with creating video shorts of his dogs, many of which were featured on Saturday Night Live. His teaching career continued alongside his career as an artist, and his works became very popular and started being collected by major museums and private collectors. In 2006 the Brooklyn Museum presented a career retrospective of his work, in a variety of media, which was titled William Wegman: Funny/Strange. He currently lives and works in New York, New York.
