Meryl Meisler was born in the Bronx, raised on Long Island. Inspired by her dad's family photos and Diane Arbus, she enrolled in a photo class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that set her path. She moved to New York in 1975 to study with Lisette Model—and has been in love with the city ever since. After years teaching art in NYC public schools, Meryl began sharing her vast archive of images—work full of a sense of place, humanity, human and a distinctly queer eye with a Jewish sense of humor. She is represented by CLAMP in NYC and Polka Galerie in Paris and continues to document the world with the same sharp curiosity.
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Long Bio:
Meryl Meisler was born in 1951 in the South Bronx and raised in North Massapequa, Long Island, NY. Inspired by Diane Arbus, Jacques Henri Lartigue, and her dad Jack and grandfather Murray Meisler, Meryl began photographing herself, family, and friends while enrolled in a photography class taught by Cavalliere Ketchum at The University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1975, Meryl returned to New York City and studied with Lisette Model, photographing her hometown and the city around her.  Brassaï's Paris de nuit inspired Meryl to document her own nightlife adventures. Helen Levitt's photos influenced Meryl to capture children at play. After working as a freelance illustrator by day, Meryl frequented and photographed the infamous New York Discos. As a 1978 CETA Artist grant recipient, Meryl created a portfolio of photographs that explored Jewish Identity for the American Jewish Congress. After CETA, Meryl began a 3-decade career as an N.Y.C. Public School Art Teacher, retiring in 2010.

Meryl was honored with the 2021 Center for Photography at Woodstock Affinity Award. She is included among The Hundred Heroines – a celebration of Women in Photography. TIME includes her in their selection of women trailblazers in photography: The Unsung American Female Photographers of the Past Century.
Meryl has received fellowships, grants, and residencies from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Light Work, Y.A.D.D.O., V.C.C.A., Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Leonian Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, Time Warner, Artists Space, C.E.T.A., the China Institute, and the Japan Society.Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Historical Society, CLAMP, Dia Art Foundation, Everson Art Museum, MASS MoCA, Islip Art Museum, Griffin Museum, Annenberg Space for Photography, the New Museum for Contemporary Art, New-York Historical Society, Steven Kasher Gallery, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Fotogalerie Friedrichshein (Berlin), ANU Museum of The Jewish People (Tel Aviv), Carole Lambert Presénte (Paris), Portraits Festival (Vichy), Philharmonie de Paris Musée de Musique and  in public spaces including Grand Central Terminal, South Street Seaport, Photoville and throughout the N.Y.C. subway system. Her work is in the permanent collections of theAmerican Jewish Congress, AT&T, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Center of Brooklyn Histoy, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Columbia University, Emory University, LaGrange Art Museum, Library of Congress, New York Transit Museum, Pfizer, Reuters, and Smith College Museum ofArt.

Upon retiring from the N.Y.C. public schools, she began releasing large bodies of previously unseen work. Meryl’s first monograph, A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwick (Bizarre, 2014), received international acclaim. The book juxtaposes her zenith of disco photos with images of the burned-out yet beautiful neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn in the 1980s. Her second book, Purgatory & Paradise SASSY ‘70s Suburbia & The City (Bizarre, 2015), contrasts intimate images of home life on Long Island alongside N.Y.C. street and nightlife.  New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco (Parallel Pictures Press 2021) digs into the darker side of disco and take the viewer into the classroom and side streets of Bushwick. STREET WALKER (Eyeshot 2024) a vibrant collection of never-before-seen images and iconic classics from the cultural hotspots of the ‘70s and‘80s.From the gritty streets of New York City to the vibrant scenes ofFire IslandLas Vegas, Miami Beach, New Orleans, San Francisco, and beyond. She has returned to her analog roots in the darkroom, making gelatin silver prints of contemporary images and never seen photos from her archive.

Meryl lives and works in New York City and Woodstock, NY, continuing the photographic memoir she began in 1973 – a uniquely American story, sweet and sassy with a pinch of mystery. CLAMP (New York City) and Polka (Paris)  represent her work.

Career Narrative
 Since 1973, I have been creating a photographic memoir with a quirky, queer eye—an archive spanning discos and burlesque, suburbia and city streets, and life as a teacher in some of New York City’s toughest neighborhoods. With compassion and humor, I capture joy amid hardship, immersing viewers in the communities and times that shaped me. Through it all, the challenges and exhilarations of nightlife have been the thread connecting my life’s work.  

The 1973 Diane Arbus retrospective at MoMA inspired mystudy of photography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where I earned anMA in Art (1975). In New York, I studied with Lisette Model, who encouraged continuing my Long Island series of family, friends, and neighbors—work featured in the 1976 Young Photographers International Exhibition in Arles. Carrying my camera everywhere, I didn’t go to photograph; I photographed where I was going, capturing street life on the way. At night, I was in the discos, chasing glamour, mystery, and the spirit of 1930s Paris.  

Submitting the LongIsland series to the CETA Artists Project (Comprehensive EmploymentTraining Act) resulted in a 1978-79 grant to photograph Jewish New York and teach photography. When CETA ended in 1979, I began a 31-year career as a NYC public school art teacher. Clubbing on weekends, I kept my nightlife photographs private; “inappropriate behavior”might get me fired.  

AIDS loomed. The disco scene faded. I began photographing the scarred yet vibrant neighborhood where I taught, Bushwick, Brooklyn. With“Artist Teachers Concerned” colleagues, we exhibited student work alongside professional artists. My students and I showed our photography-based collaborative assemblages at the WhitneyBiennial (1991), the New Museum(1996, 1999), and the Dia Art Foundation (1998). In 1990, I received the Disney American Teacher Award in Visual Arts.Travel grants from the Japan Society (2000)and the China Institute (2001) enhanced my ability to teach students about Japanese and Chinese culture through photographs I took in Asia. 

 Throughout my teaching career, I continued my own practice. My first solo show, School and Surroundings (1984), explored life in and around the schools where I worked. I began painting directly on photographs to reveal the layered historiesI envisioned in abandoned buildings, creating ExtendedRealities, depicting signs of life amid urban ruins. The New YorkFoundation for the Arts awarded me a 1990 fellowship for the series.  

ExtendedRealities drew Apple and Adobe’s attention. They invited me to the Center for Creative Imaging (1991) to be among the first artists trained in Photoshop. While diving and photographing underwater, I envisioned New York submerged like Atlantis. At CCI, I began working on Immersions, digitally compositing my city landmarks and marine life photos. Immersions were exhibited widely, including installations at Grand Central Terminal (1995–96), the Brooklyn Museum (2001), and throughout the NYC subway (2001–02). NYFA awarded a Catalogue Project Grant (2002) to document Immersions.  

While co-curating Up from Flames: Mapping Bushwick’s Recovery 1977–2007 for the Brooklyn Historical Society, I began researching my archive of 1980s Bushwick photographs, revealing resilience amid decay.After two decades of mixing media,I rediscovered the power of straightforward documentary photography. Bushwick 1980s exhibitions followed at Soho Photo Gallery (2011), The Living Gallery (2012–13), BIZARRE Bushwick (2014–15), Fotogalerie Friedrichshain, Berlin (2021 & 2025), and Palais des Congrès de Vichy (2022). In 2021–22, Photoville mounted a public installation of the series on the fence of my former school, where the worksnow hang permanently indoors.  

Attending events at BIZARRE, a drag burlesque club in Bushwick, I realized my Bushwick and disco photographs belonged together. BIZARRE published my first monographs: A Tale of Two Cities:Disco Era Bushwick (2014)and Purgatory & Paradise: Sassy ‘70sSuburbia & The City (2015). Steven Kasher Gallery began representing mywork with a 2016 solo exhibition, and comparing the vintage gelatin silver prints on display with my recent digital prints felt like viewing diamonds next to rhinestones. After a 35-year hiatus, I returned to the darkroom.  

Meanwhile, BIZARRE introduced me to a new generation of performers, rekindling my passion for nightlife photography. When the club closed in 2019, I followed performers to other venues. Wide-eyed, I pursue the gritty glamor of burlesque, drag, circus, and showgirls— onstage, backstage, and in the raw moments when the night strips them bare.  

Preparing for exhibitions at the New-York Historical Society (2019) and Brooklyn Museum (2020), I attended residencies at Yaddo(2019), Light Work (2019), and the Virginia Center for the CreativeArts (2020). After Kasher Gallery closed in 2019,CLAMP began representing me. With support from LMCC Manhattan Arts and a Leonian Foundation Grant (2020), I published New York Paradise Lost:Bushwick Era Disco (Parallel Pictures Press, 2021). That same year, I received the Center for Photography at Woodstock Affinity Award.  

Media outlets, including The New York Times,The New Yorker,The Guardian, Le Monde, Le Figaro, NationalGeographic, Vanity Fair,Harper’s, Bazaar, STERN,Aperture, British Journal of Photography, Hyperallergic, CNN, NPR, ABC, Radio France, and PBS have featured my work.  

Since 2021, I have had 15 solo shows, 32 group exhibitions, and published Street Walker(EYESHOT, 2024). In the last year I’ve spoken at the Women StreetPhotographers/Leica conference, AIPAD, the NationalArts Club, and SVA. I curated LisetteModel’s work for A Lens of Her Own at the ANUMuseum, Tel Aviv, where ANU exhibits my work beside hers. In Paris, Disco, I’m Coming Out at Musée de la musique featured fifty three of my images and I was a symposium presenter. The exhibition will travel to Wereldmuseum, Amsterdam (2026–27), and MAS Museum, Antwerp(2028).Polka Galerie now represents me in France.Future solo exhibitions are scheduled at a Netherlands museum (2027), CLAMP (2028),and the Alice Austen House Museum in New York (2028). 

I hope to expand my nightlife  series beyond New York—photographing queer nightlife across the United States, documenting resilient, defiant, and celebratory communities that burn bright in a world turning cold.