James Welling grew up taking drawing classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT. Welling studied at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh before receiving his BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. From 1995 to 2016, he served as the Area Head of Photography at UCLA, and since 2012 he has been a Lecturer at Princeton University.

Welling is a conceptual artist known for his color-filtered and digitally manipulated photographs. His work often explores ambiguity and skepticism while maintaining a deeply formal process that connects the legacy of Conceptual Art to the technical practice of photography.