Artist Life
Megoozer is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, painting, zines, and experimental video. At its core, his work is about catching the stuff most people walk right past—weathered textures, flickering light, forgotten corners, and the quiet moments buried in the noise of the city. For Megoozer, a photograph is rarely the final step; it’s raw material to be torn down and rebuilt through hand-bound self-publishing, tactile mixed-media, and moving images. Embracing chance, texture, and physical imperfection, his process isn’t about cleanly documenting reality, but capturing how it actually feels to drift through a place.
Roots, Influences, & Community
Born in New York City, Megoozer’s visual perspective began taking shape during the 1990s while attending Catholic school in SoHo—navigating a neighborhood caught in the shift between its raw art-loft past and rapid commercialization, all framed by the rigid visual rituals of parochial school. He spent his high school years in South Florida—a sharp, sun-bleached contrast in pace and scenery—before moving to London in his twenties, where he spent most of a decade immersed in the UK’s music and DIY print culture. Living abroad reframed how he moved through cities and deepened his hands-on approach to making art, eventually bringing him back to New York with a sharper, outsider-looking-in perspective on his hometown.
That trajectory feeds directly into his visual language, which draws from a mix of atmospheric dread, raw collage, and graphic subculture. You can trace lines back to the heavy emotional resonance of Mark Rothko, the surreal industrial environments of David Lynch, and the urgent street-collage ethos of David Wojnarowicz. That weight is balanced by the candid, unfiltered downtown photography of Matt Weinberger and the psychedelic, acid-cartoon grit of Killer Acid. Just as important as those influences is the constant back-and-forth within his immediate circle—his work is continually shaped, challenged, and pushed forward by close artist friends like Christina Allan, Dalt Jacob, and Julio Cesar Williams, a crew of peers who keep the process grounded in real-time creative dialogue, experimentation, and shared energy. Megoozer currently lives and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn.