William Wegman is an artist best known for creating series of compositions involving dogs, primarily his own Weimaraners in various costumes and poses. Wegman reportedly originally intended to pursue a career as a painter. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Massachusetts College of Art in 1965 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1967. While teaching at California State University, Long Beach, he acquired the first and most famous of the dogs he photographed, a Weimaraner he named Man Ray . Man Ray later became... so popular that the Village Voice named him "Man of the Year" in 1982. He named a subsequent dog Fay Ray . On January 29, 1992, Wegman appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and showed a video clip of "Dog Duet," his 1975 short of Man Ray & another dog slowly and mysteriously peering around. Wegman explained that he had created the video by moving a tennis ball around, off-camera, thus capturing the dogs' attention .
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