Walter Wick

I recently got to go to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore where they were having an exhibit on the work of Walter Wick.


Wick is an American artist and photographer best known for the elaborate images in the I Spy and Can you see what I see? book series. Born in Hartford, Connecticut he attended the Paier College of Art.  After school he embarked on a career as a commercial photographer and eventually shifted to photo-illustration for books and magazines.
In 1991 Wick began a collaboration with writer Jean Marzollo on the enormously successful I Spy search-and-find picture books. Eight original titles were produced and millions of copies sold.


The exhibit I saw was on these I Spy pictures he makes and I was very enamored with how he did it and the style. First he would create puppets or whatever was in the foreground. He would also create the backgrounds. He would then photo composite the two images and digitally effect them to get the look he wanted. Which was a very 3d and incredibly detailed affect.
They actually had a few of his models at the exhibit and it was interesting to see the scale of the pieces. Along with being pretty incredible photos each piece was also a game. Challenging you to look through each work to find multiple small "events" contained within.