Double Take

Vik Muniz isn't really a photographer in the sense that most photographers are photographers.

He takes pictures, sure, but he takes pictures of pictures. What Muniz does is more like painting with photography - he'll create a piece that first looks like a regular old photo, but upon closer inspection, reveals itself to actually be a photograph of a drawing made out of something like chocolate syrup.

From far away, one picture might look like a simple line drawing of a chair but as you get closer, you discover that it's really a picture of wire shaped into a chair.

Muniz, a Brazilian who moved to the United States in the 1980s, has done many series that try to make an incredibly realistic photograph out of something ordinary. His current effort is on display at the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography in an International Center of Photography exhibit called Seeing is Believing, which is traveling internationally.

One series, Pictures of Thread uses string wound in spirals and bunches to create landscapes. Another, Pictures with Chocolate, shows what seem to be typical action shots, only they're not really people - they're painted with chocolate syrup.

What's fascinating about Muniz's work is how incredibly photograph-like everything is. His series The Best of LIFE looks like a bunch of slightly-blurry copies of those all-American photos we've all seen everywhere - a woman screaming in agony over a student shot to death at Kent State, Neal Armstrong walking on the moon - but only after reading the plaque on the side of the wall do you learn that the pictures are actually drawings Muniz did from memory, after he lost his copy of the book The Best of LIFE.

In all of Muniz's series, one thing is clear: things aren't always what they seem. Muniz likes to play with the idea of making something ordinary out of something weird. He takes what's already been done and re-does it.

Another series, Displacement, uses crumpled-up paper as interpretations of actual paintings or photos. Black boxes are drawn in the center of the paper, and typewritten under the boxes it tells you what you're supposed to see in the wrinkles if you look hard enough.

Who knew that crumpled paper could in fact resemble Pope John Paul II kissing the ground at the Newark Airport?

Seeing is Believing is not your everyday photography exhibit, just as Vik Muniz is not your everyday photographer. Instead of just looking at the pictures, you have to study them, because what you see upon first glance is not even the half of it.

Vik Muniz's photography is multi-layered. Exhibits that force you to question what you're actually looking at without insulting you are hard to come by; Seeing is Believing may be one in a million.