Lisa Kereszi was born in 1973 in Pennsylvania and grew up outside Philadelphia to a father who ran the family auto junkyard and to a mother who owned an antique shop. In 1995 she graduated from Bard College with a Bachelor of Arts, finally settling on a concentration in Photography after double-majoring in that and in Literature/Creative Writing.

After college she moved to New York City and worked as an assistant to Nan Goldin. In 2000 she received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale University School of Art. She has been on the faculty there as a Lecturer since 2004, and also served as Acting Director of Undergraduate Studies in Photography. She was appointed Critic and also the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art in 2013 (and served as DUS until 2023), Senior Critic in 2019, and Assistant Director of Graduate Studies in Photography in 2023. She also is a guest critic at the Hartford Art School, and has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow at the MacDowell Colony.

Her work is in many private collections, including that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Norton Museum of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. Her work has been shown in group shows at the Whitney Museum, Bronx Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Queens Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum and the Wellin Museum at Hamilton College, and others. She had a solo show in May 2002 and again in March 2003 at Pierogi in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, where she had Winter 2005, 2007, 2009, 2012 and 2019 solo shows. Other solo shows include a mixed media installation in the Mike Kelley Mobile Homestead at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2017, and also at the Matrix Gallery at UC Berkeley, the latter as part of the 2005 Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers.

Her editorial work has appeared in many books and magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Nest, New York, Harper’s, W, The London Telegraph Sunday Magazine, Details, GQ, Black Book, Jane, Newsweek, House & Garden, Penthouse, Nylon, zingmagazine, Flaunt, wallpaper* and others. She was included in the 2003 list of the 30 top emerging photographers by Photo District News, and was granted a commission to photograph Governor’s Island by the Public Art Fund that same year, which culminated in shows at the Urban Center Gallery and the Mayor’s Office at City Hall and a 2004 exhibition catalog.

Several monographs are in print – Fun and Games with Nazraeli Press in Fall 2009, and two with Damiani Editore: Fantasies in Spring 2008, and Joe’s Junk Yard in 2012. Those were followed by three experimental artist’s books – The More I Learn About Women with J&L Books in 2014, then in early 2024, MOURNING with Minor Matters Books and IN with Roman Nvmerals (a collaboration with her family.)

Kereszi lives and works near New Haven.