Vik Muniz on Photography, Mind, and Matter

Join us for a dialog between artists Vik Muniz and Lucas Blalock, as they talk about Vik Muniz on Photography, Mind, and Matter, the most recent ebook in The Photography Workshop Series (Aperture, 2025).

In this quantity, Vik Muniz—recognized for his playful photos that complicate what is known as {a photograph}, sculpture, or portray—affords his perception into considering creatively and seeing the acquainted in new and stunning methods. Through photographs and phrases, Muniz shares his inventive observe and discusses a variety of subjects, from producing concepts and creating artworks that problem viewers’ perceptions, to considering by collaboration, imperfection, and the interaction of topic, scale, and materials.

This program is offered in partnership with The School of Visual Arts.

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Vik Muniz (born in São Paulo, 1961) is a prolific, internationally acknowledged artist, whose signature fashion appropriates and reinterprets iconic photographs of our time. His work is featured in main collections, together with the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He has revealed many books, together with the Aperture titles Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer (2005) and Postcards from Nowhere (2020). Waste Land, a documentary about his work within the favelas and landfills round Rio de Janeiro, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2010.

Lucas Blalock (born in Asheville, North Carolina, 1978) is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose work is within the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, amongst many others. His work has been featured in publications together with Artforum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, W Magazine, British Journal of Photography, and Time.

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Image: Vik Muniz, Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, after Johann Moritz Rugendas, from Live Cash, 2022; from Vik Muniz on Photography, Mind, and Matter (Aperture, 2025). © Vik Muniz 2025