Like other conceptual artists of the seventies, Wegman, who began his artistic career by creating original performances, soon made use of photography and video to record his actions. But unlike many of his fellow artists, he gave his self-exploratory exercises a humorous touch and a powerful irony that undermined the seriousness that characterised some of the new artistic trends that arose during that period, such as minimal or body art. Consisting of simple shots taken in real time and performed in front of a static camera, his tapes document absurdist anecdotes, amusing monologues and surrealist visual gags based on minimal props, including his own body and everyday situations as comic material. Without any doubt, the works of that period are among the most enduring classics of the video genre.

At the same time, in 1972, two years after he had produced his first photos and videos and in response to the limitations of these media forms, Wegman began to draw. Just like all his previous works, these first drawings, which have a simple and unfinished appearance, are full of puns, double entendres, semantic and syntactic associations and all kinds of rhetorical figures.

At that time, he purchased a Weimaraner dog (one of the most original, ancient and mysterious of breeds), which he called Man Ray, marking the beginning of a fruitful collaboration that would last more than 12 years. In 1986, a new dog came into life of Wegman, Fay Ray. This marked the beginning of a prolific collaboration characterised by Wegman's extensive use of a 50 x 60 cm Polaroid camera. From 1989 to the present day, there have been six additions to the "family". As he himself declares with a certain degree of sarcasm, "my Weimaraners are perfect fashion models. Their elegant, slippery forms are covered in grey–and everyone knows that grey goes with everything”.

What is true, however, is that, beyond the irony, and through the attention that he has given to his attentive models, William Wegman belongs to that group of artists who have delved most into the idea of the portrait and have done more to renew this art form from a viewpoint which is both contemporary and classical, as in order to portray dogs he deploys a rhetoric which, until the last century, had been reserved for representations of the human body. But besides basing his compositions on the history of painting, Wegman has inherited a tradition which goes back at least to the Metamorphoses of Ovid, continued by the fables of Lafontaine and pursued today at the Disney factory. He is aware of this tradition and with a healthy sense of humour, plays with it, with the added advantage that he makes contemporary art more accessible to children.

From Wegman's relationship with his Weimaraner dogs arose a series of books inspired by their wide range of skills as actors and actresses. The first of these was Cinderella, and this was followed by other books for children based not only on traditional stories but also others of his own invention: Little Red Ridding Hood, Mother Goose, Farm Days, My Town, ABC, Circle/Triangle/Square, Surprise Feast and Chip Wants a Dog. Wegman has also published books for adults, such as Fay, the story of her life with Fay Ray, Puppies, the story of all the litters up to the present time (both published by Hyperion), and in the autumn of 2002, William Wegman 20 x 24 (Abrams), a review of the photographs taken by Wegman over a period of almost 30 years with a Polaroid 50 x 60 cm.

He is also the author of videos and films for Saturday Night Live and Nickelodeon. His video fragments for Sesame Street have appeared regularly on the programme since 1989. His videos include Alphabet Soup, Fay's Twelve Days of Christmas and Mother Goose. In 1989, his film The Hardly Boys was presented at the Sundance Film Festival. And, after a period of inactivity which lasted almost 20 years, Wegman returned to the format of his video productions of the seventies, producing new films in 1998 and 1999.

Today, William Wegman lives in New York and Maine, where he continues to make videos and take photographs, as well as painting and drawing.