I Spy! Walter Wick's Hidden Wonders

I Spy! Walter Wick's Hidden Wonders is running at the High Museum of Art through January 3, 2027, in the Special Exhibition Galleries on the second level of the Stent Family Wing. It's the largest survey of Walter Wick's work to date, and it's a bit of a milestone for the High: since 2013, the museum has run a children's book series, and this is the first one to take photography as its primary medium.

If you grew up with the I Spy and Can You See What I See? books, you know the drill: a page full of objects, a riddle, and the challenge of finding the right thing. Wick is the photographer behind those images. He's an American born in 1953 in Hartford, Connecticut, and he started in commercial photography. He eventually got obsessed with the technical side of studio work—experimenting with mirrors, time exposures, and photo composites to make a camera describe things that aren't quite possible. His first I Spy book, A Book of Picture Riddles, came out in 1992, and over 35 years he's published more than 26 titles that have sold in the millions. The riddles were written by Jean Marzollo, who died in 2018.

What makes this show more than just a walk through the books is what's behind the scenes. It pairs the plates you recognize with rarely seen material and the three-dimensional models Wick built to take the photos in the first place. You'll see the actual sets for City Blocks (1994), Yikes! (1994), and Clouds (1994), so you can see the physical objects and then see how they were transformed into the photographs.

The exhibition is free for members and museum pass holders, and $23.50 for not-yet-members. It's at the High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree Rd NE, through January 3, 2027.