William Wegman - Brief Biography & Book List
Brief Bio
William Wegman is well known in American popular culture as "that photographer who dresses up Weimaraner dogs." He is more complex than this label might suggest however. Born in 1943, he began his career as a painter and drawer, graduating from the Massachusetts College of Art with a BFA in 1965 and from the University of Illinois with an MFA in 1967. He immediately began teaching at various Wisconsin colleges until moving to California in 1970.
From painting and drawing, he extended his work to video and to photography. He acquired his first Weimaraner - Man Ray - in 1970 while in California. The dog grew up in the context of video and photography. Wegman used him in both videos and photographs as a kind of found object. This collaboration between dog and photographer was so successful the Village Voice humorously named Man Ray the "Man of the Year" in 1982. Wegman continued to pursue his collaboration with Weimaraners even after Man Ray passed away in 1984.
In all of Wegman's work - from painting to video to photographs - there pervades a certain sense of humor. The point of the work is not necessarily humor, yet Wegman's deadpan sense of comedy cannot truly be separated from the work itself. Excellent examples of early work can be found on the Haggerty Museum of Art website. A collection of a few of his early videos have also been posted to YouTube here, here, and here (this same early video is also available on the web here). This early interview with Liza Béar also gives a sense of Wegman's style and of details of his video work in particular. This Salon.com article from 2000 provides a more up-to-date survey of his work.
The popularity of his work lead him to such diverse activities as a 1976 appearance on Saturday Night Live, many collaborations with Sesame Street (many of which can be seen here), and a collaboration with Steve Martin (which can be found here). He has authored many books for Children. He also has a permanent outdoor sculpture entitled La Jolla Vista View at UC San Deigo.
In 2006, Wegman had a retrospective at the Brooklyn museum which encompassed all his work to date. The NY Times conducted an informative video interview with Wegman regarding this exhibit. In 2007, he was the artist-in-residence at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA.
A variety of images can be found on-line from the galleries which represent Wegman. There are images from a gallery in NY, a gallery in DC, a gallery in Scottsdale, AZ and a gallery in LA (featuring several paintings in addition to photographs). A detailed chronology of exhibits can be found on Wegman's website.
Books
List of 10 William Wegman photobooks:
Man's Best Friend (1982)
Everyday Problems: William Wegman (1984)
$19.84 (1984)
William Wegman: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs, Videotapes (1990)
Field Guide to North America and to Other Regions (1993)
William Wegman: Fashion Photographs (1999)
Fay (1999)
How Do You Get to MOMAQNS? (2002)
William Wegman: Polaroids (2002)
Funney/Strange (2006)
You can sometimes find used copies of these books here.
Children's Books
List of 18 William Wegman books for children:
Cinderella (1993)
Little Red Riding Hood (1993)
ABC (1994)
The Making of Little Red Riding Hood (1994)
1, 2, 3 (1995)
Triangle, Square, Circle (1995)
Wegman's Mother Goose (1996)
Puppies (1997)
William Wegman's Farm Days: or How Chip Learnt an Important Lesson on the Farm, or a Day in the Country, or Hip Chip's Trip, or Farmer Boy (1997)
My Town (1998)
What Do You Do? (1999)
Baby Book (1999)
William Wegman's Pups (1999)
The Night Before Christmas (2000)
Surprise Party (2000)
Wegmanology (2001)
Chip Wants a Dog (2003)
Dress Up Batty (2004)
You can sometimes find used copies of these books here.
