Walter Wick
My mother says that when I was a child, I walked with a
bounce. This must be true because I remember having a very
happy childhood.Walter Wick bio pic I grew up in rural
Connecticut with three older brothers and a younger sister.
We loved exploring the nearby woods. I walked the
neighborhood on stilts I made from tree limbs. I made them
for other kids too. I also made skateboards out of old
roller skates that I took apart and fastened to pieces of
plywood. I loved to tinker and build.
My first serious interest in art began with drawing and
painting in high school. It was then that my brother
Robert, who worked part time at a camera store, introduced
me to photography. I studied photojournalism and landscape
bio Picphotography at the Paier College of Art in Hamden,
Connecticut. After graduating in 1973, I worked as a lab
technician and product photographer in a commercial studio
in Hartford. The work was not glamorous, but I was
fascinated with the technical challenges of making the
surfaces, shadows, and highlights look exactly right in the
photographs. Before long, I moved to New York City and started my own
studio. At first it was hard to find clients. The lack of
work gave me time to explore new ideas and techniques,
which resulted in a small, but effective, portfolio of
seven images. One of these images Walter Wickcame about
almost by accident. I was organizing screws, paper clips
and other odds and ends. As I began sorting, I liked the
way the objects looked spread out on my light box. After
hours of careful arranging, I took a picture. This
photograph of odds and ends was the spark that helped
inspire the first I Spy book! But that would take another
10 years. My new portfolio was a success and I was soon busy making
photographs for magazines, such as "Psychology Today"
and "Discover". I also made photographic puzzles
for "Games" magazine. In 1985, the "Odds and Ends"
photograph caught the eye of Jean Marzollo, the editor
of "Let's Find Out", a kindergarten magazine published by
Scholastic. She asked me to do a colorful photograph of
fasteners for a poster. bio pic walter wick
This poster, in turn, caught the eye of editors in the
Scholastic book division. In 1991, Jean Marzollo and I
collaborated on I Spy: A Book of Picture Riddles. With the
success of the I Spy, I've had opportunities to visit
schools and see firsthand how kids respond to my work. It
occurred to me that subjects that have long fascinated me,
science and visual perception, are of interest to kids,
too. That led to my first two solo projects: A Drop of
Water: A Book of Science and Wonder and Walter Wick's
Optical Tricks. When my third solo project, Can You See
What I See?: Picture Puzzles to Search and Solve debuted on
the “New York Times” bestseller list in 2002, a new series
of search-and-find puzzle books was born. In all the years
I’ve been doing photography, I’ve never had a more
appreciative audience than kids. I suspect I’ll be creating
children’s books for a long time to come.
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Series
Books:Can You See What I See?, October 2011
Hardcover
Night Before Christmas, October 2005
Can You See What I See?
Hardcover
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