Melissa O’Shaughnessy is a street photographer based in New York City. She was born in 1960 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She studied at Georgetown University and the University of St. Thomas and graduated with a degree in journalism.
She came to photography later in life. About 20 years ago she took a black and white darkroom class at a local university. In about 2010 she took a street photography workshop with Joel Meyerowitz in Palm Springs. She now photographs in color with a digital camera on the streets of New York.
Her first book, Perfect Strangers: New York City Street Photographs, was published by Aperture in 2020. It has an introduction by Joel Meyerowitz and 91 color photographs made over seven years. Her work is also in the anthologies Bystander: A History of Street Photography (2017) and Women Street Photographers (2021). She is a member of the collective UP Photographers.
