Stephen Wilkes DAY TO NIGHT Photo Shoot Feature On CBS News Sunday Morning Show Nov 11

Bethesda Fountain, Day To Night

In his series, “Day to Night,” Stephen Wilkes photographs a scene “for a minimum of ten hours, from the same perspective, capturing a fluid visual narrative of day into night within a single frame.” CBS News Sunday Morning correspondent Martha Teichner joined Stephen Wilkes in a crane suspended over New York's Central Park during the recent creation of one of Wilkes "Day To Night" photographs. A special CBS Morning News segment, produced by Meggie Miao, was broadcast on November 11 - check local listings for time in your area.

WATCH IT HERE

"Day To Night", an exhibition of large-scale color photographs (up to 50 x 80 inches) was held at Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe April 27 through June 16, 2012, the first time the full collection was exhibited together. A selection of these photographs remains on view in the gallery.

 For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art, editorial, and commercial photography. With numerous awards and honors, as well as five major exhibitions in the last five years, Wilkes has made an impression on the world of photography. His most recent series features vibrant photographs of Times Square, Park Avenue, Coney Island, and Central Park, among other iconic New York locations, and capture, in a single frame, the transition from “Day to Night”. Using digital composites of images of the same site taken over a period of up to 15 hours, the photographs have a time-traveling quality, with the hustle and bustle in the afternoon sun giving way to the glow of city lights in darkening, cloud-streaked skies.


View the full "Day To Night collection here.  December 1, 2012 UPDATE: Contact the gallery for news about the newest international addition to the collection: Jerusalem, Day To Night.)


"Anything one can imagine one can create. Over the last several years, photographic technology has evolved to a point where anything is possible. I imagined changing time in a single photograph. I began to explore this fascination with time in a new series of photographs called: “Day to Night”. Photographing from one camera angle continuously for up to 15 hours, capturing the fleeting moments throughout the day and night. A select group of these images are then digitally blended into one photograph, capturing the changing of time within a single frame."

"Day to Night embodies a combination of my favorite things to photograph; documentary street photography melded with epic cityscapes. The work is a personal reflection of my deep love for New York. As this series has evolved, I discovered that the photographs began to highlight a form of emergent behavior within the daily life of the city. Studying the communication between pedestrians on sidewalks, cars and cabs on the street, these individual elements become a complex life form as they flow together to create the chaotic harmony that is Manhattan."

"Henri Cartier Bresson once said, “Photography is the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things.” I am forever fascinated by the rhythm that is New York, the city’s relentless energy from “Day to Night”'.--Stephen Wilkes



Wilkes' photographs are in the permanent collection of The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dow Jones & Company, New York City; The Jewish Museum, New York City; and in numerous important private collections throughout the world. His work has graced the covers of numerous international publications, including Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Life Magazine, and Time Magazine.

For further information, please contact the Gallery.

Related:

THE Magazine Review: Stephen Wilkes: Day to Night

 Opening Night: Stephen Wilkes "Day To Night"

Stephen Wilkes: Day To Night Exhibition Featured in La Lettre de la Photographie

Flatiron Building, Day To Night (2010) © Stephen Wilkes

  COURTESY MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Via La Lettre de la Photographie

For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art, editorial, and commercial photography. With numerous awards and honors, as well as five major exhibitions in the last five years, Wilkes has made an impression on the world of photography. His most recent series features vibrant photographs of Times Square, Park Avenue, Coney Island, and Central Park, among other iconic New York locations, and capture, in a single frame, the transition from “Day to Night”. Using digital composites of images of the same site taken over a period of up to 15 hours, the photographs have a time-traveling quality, with the hustle and bustle in the afternoon sun giving way to the glow of city lights in darkening, cloud-streaked skies.

"Anything one can imagine one can create. Over the last several years, photographic technology has evolved to a point where anything is possible. I imagined changing time in a single photograph. I began to explore this fascination with time in a new series of photographs called: “Day to Night”. Photographing from one camera angle continuously for up to 15 hours, capturing the fleeting moments throughout the day and night. A select group of these images are then digitally blended into one photograph, capturing the changing of time within a single frame."

"Day to Night embodies a combination of my favorite things to photograph; documentary street photography melded with epic cityscapes. The work is a personal reflection of my deep love for New York. As this series has evolved, I discovered that the photographs began to highlight a form of emergent behavior within the daily life of the city. Studying the communication between pedestrians on sidewalks, cars and cabs on the street, these individual elements become a complex life form as they flow together to create the chaotic harmony that is Manhattan."

Full post and slide show here.

NOTE: Exhibition has been extended through June 24, 2012

OPENING NIGHT: STEPHEN WILKES - DAY TO NIGHT

All Photographs by Hance Partners/Image Craft ©All Rights Reserved

On April 27, 2012, Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, opened a one man show featuring photographer Stephen Wilkes' series of Day to Night images, Ten very large framed prints occupied the entire gallery in this first one man show of Stephen’s latest work.

Hance Partners/Image Craft, under the direction of master printer Richard Jackson, collaborated with Stephen to produce the prints said to be some of his most stunning images ever.

Hance Partners/Image Craft produces these magnificint images up to 80 inches wide, and also creates a complex four stage mounting and framing process to complete these works of art.

For more info on the images, please see the Hance Partners/Image Craft blog at:
imcraft.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/stephen-wilkes-ny-day-to...

OPENING RECEPTION TONIGHT, 5 - 7: STEPHEN WILKES - DAY TO NIGHT

Pasatiempo

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present "Day To Night", an exhibition of large-scale color photographs (up to 50 x 80 inches) by leading contemporary photographer Stephen Wilkes. The exhibition opens with a public reception with Stephen Wilkes from 5 - 7 PM tonight, Friday, April 27. The exhibition continues through June 16. 

More.

STEPHEN WILKES: DAY TO NIGHT

 

 

Coney Island, Day To Night

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present "Day To Night", an exhibition of large-scale color photographs (up to 50 x 80 inches) by leading contemporary photographer Stephen Wilkes. The exhibition opens with a public reception with Stephen Wilkes from 5 - 7 PM on Friday, April 27. The exhibition continues through June 16. 

For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art, editorial, and commercial photography. With numerous awards and honors, as well as five major exhibitions in the last five years, Wilkes has made an impression on the world of photography. His most recent series features vibrant photographs of Times Square, Park Avenue, Coney Island, and Central Park, among other iconic New York locations, and capture, in a single frame, the transition from “Day to Night”. Using digital composites of images of the same site taken over a period of up to 15 hours, the photographs have a time-traveling quality, with the hustle and bustle in the afternoon sun giving way to the glow of city lights in darkening, cloud-streaked skies.

 "Anything one can imagine one can create. Over the last several years, photographic technology has evolved to a point where anything is possible. I imagined changing time in a single photograph. I began to explore this fascination with time in a new series of photographs called: “Day to Night”. Photographing from one camera angle continuously for up to 15 hours, capturing the fleeting moments throughout the day and night. A select group of these images are then digitally blended into one photograph, capturing the changing of time within a single frame."

"Day to Night embodies a combination of my favorite things to photograph; documentary street photography melded with epic cityscapes. The work is a personal reflection of my deep love for New York. As this series has evolved, I discovered that the photographs began to highlight a form of emergent behavior within the daily life of the city. Studying the communication between pedestrians on sidewalks, cars and cabs on the street, these individual elements become a complex life form as they flow together to create the chaotic harmony that is Manhattan."

"Henri Cartier Bresson once said, “Photography is the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things.” I am forever fascinated by the rhythm that is New York, the city’s relentless energy from “Day to Night”'.--Stephen Wilkes

Selected photographs from the Day To Night series were exhibited at 2011 Art Basel Miami, and just recently at the 2012 AIPAD Photography Show in New York to widespread acclaim. This exhibition will be the first time the full collection has been exhibited together.

 Photography has been Stephen’s passion since age 12, when his fascination with science led him to take photographs through a microscope. He began working on his own at age 15, attended Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications, graduating in 1980. In 1982, Wilkes opened his own studio in Manhattan.

 “Ever since I took my first pictures, photography has always been the joy of discovery for me,” says Wilkes. “The excitement not only lies with what I see and how I see it, but mostly when someone looks at the finished photograph and feels the same emotions I felt when I took the picture. There is something sacred about the right moment. The frame where all the energy comes together and, in one instant, a story is told.”

Wilkes' photographs are in the permanent collection of The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dow Jones & Company, New York City; The Jewish Museum, New York City; and in numerous important private collections throughout the world. His work has graced the covers of numerous international publications, including Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Life Magazine, and Time Magazine.

Stephen Wilkes Explores New York as an Emergent Life Form in 'New York: Day to Night'

Via The Village Voice Blogs



Things We Like

By Jen Doll

Thursday, Aug. 18, 2011

When we first saw the photographs making up Stephen Wilkes' "New York: Day to Night" series, we gasped. We have long loved Magritte's "Empire of Light" painting, which plays with simultaneous experiences of darkness and light (you know, the one with the blue, day-like sky, the dark house, and the glowing lamppost?). And Wilkes' new offerings do that, but on the backdrop of New York, with so much detail and energy...not to mention, they're photos. Truly, they are so cool. We spoke with him recently to find out how he did it, and what inspired him.

How did you come up with the idea for the series?
The inception of the idea came about 15 years ago, when Life magazine was still in existence and I'd been commissioned to go to Mexico City to do a four-panel gatefold of all the people involved in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. I ended up discovering that the main set where the movie was filmed was a square, so I couldn't do a gatefold unless I created another technique. At the time David Hockney was doing his montage technique, and I thought, I'd open the square and shoot it that way. I shot Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, and on the side of the set there was a mirror in which you could see their reflection. In the center in the photo they were embracing, and in the mirror they were kissing. That was the only difference. That's when the idea of changing time in a photograph became intriguing to me. Fifteen years later, I can take a photo and literally change time in it -- that's become a reality.

More recently, I was commissioned to do a photo of the Highline for New York magazine, and in a conversation with Jody Quon, I said, I've got this crazy idea -- the Highline is an amazing place, you're intimate with New York but also distanced enough to take in the breadth of the city. I wanted to photograph it and show that. I had this cherry picker, and that's how it sort of evolved, looking from south to north, and thinking, what if it goes from day to night?

That was the first one I did, and that led to another image, also for New York, of Washington Square Park. That was a vertical day to night. After that I realized this was a unique thing, and I felt compelled to do more. I started exploring New York for these views.

"Gramercy Park," by Stephen Wilkes

​How do you identify the views you want to photograph?
I'm looking for these iconic views of New York, views we all sort of think about, areas we can relate to. But I'm trying to look at them in a way that people have never really seen them. It's like a voyeur, it's intimate, but there's also this breadth going on. I'm trying to work on a scale in which you can read body language and gesture. What are the people in the photograph all doing? It dawned on me, I'm studying New York as an emergent life form, and the way you can see the city flow, it's a form of emergent behavior. You realize that the pedestrians are communicating, the cabs, all these elements are coming together and creating a complex life form. In a way that's how the city works. And, in a strange way, photographically, it's almost an emergent form, the concept of a single photo is being changed in this way.

Do you have a favorite photo in the collection?
I'm finishing one that's quickly becoming my favorite. It's Coney Island on a Saturday afternoon. The perspective is from floating above the boardwalk. The amusement park is night, the beach is day, and it's full of activity. The level of detail -- I'm working with a large-format camera, and it's exciting that people can see the detail online, but in person, you can see it 60 inches big, and the photos look like windows, and you can actually see into people's windows...

"Coney Island" by Stephen Wilkes

​
Tell us about the process of taking the photos.
We've been working with the city to get perspective that people haven't been able to see before. We'll be in the center of Park Avenue, 100 feet in the air. When I'm in the cherry picker, my eye is scanning every square inch of what the photo is. There is this sense of awe, when you make these discoveries: There's a person in that window, and she's having dinner, there's a person on the rooftop...
In the Park Avenue shot, we were taking pictures and this truck pulled onto the right-hand side of the street. It was a black truck with a logo that said "Day and Night," and you can see that in my photo! There have been all kinds of serendipity moments, and that's what New York is about.

Very much so...
I get to the location and I have no control of who's in or out of my photo, and all the hustle and bustle and documentary aspect is what it is....it's like a fusion of documentary street photography and at the same time, the epic study of the city and architecture and scope of New York. It's really been exciting to meld those two things together.

What's your goal for the completion of the series?
I plan on doing a book with this work, so the finished amount is still up in the air. I have another opening in the spring in Santa Fe, and we'll probably have at that point 15 images. It just keeps evolving. I'm shooting very specific seasons, like Rockefeller Center with the Christmas tree. Combining seasons is something in the back of my mind, showing how unique New York is through the seasons and how different it feels.

It's the most complex thing I've ever done photographically. I think when people look at the medium of photography today, there's a sense of everything's going to video, but I look at still photos, and I think there's lots of room to push that medium. The bottom line is, do you discover something new every time you look at it? I shoot for 15 hours at a time and people ask, "How do you possibly do that?" I say, New York is such a wondrous place, and to sit above it like that...people spend afternoons sipping coffee and people watching...you can just imagine my views!

"Times Square," by Stephen Wilkes

​
Wilkes' show runs from September 8 to October 29 at ClampArt. He'll also show at Santa Fe's Monroe Gallery in the spring of 2012. (April 27 - June 30, 2012)

[JDoll / @thisisjendoll]

STEPHEN WILKES BLENDS DAY INTO NIGHT

Times Square, Day To Night 2010

 September, 2011
 PDN Magazine
 By Jacqueline Tobin

The photographer discusses his new project in which he explores the concept of “changing time” in a single photograph.

OVER THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNOLOGY HAS REACHED a point where you can create almost any thing you dream up. For Stephen Wilkes this meant turning his fascination with the passage of time within a single photograph into a full-scale, fine-art project titled “Day Into Night.” It comprises digital composites he outputs as limited edition, gallery prints sized at 30 x 40 and 48 x 60 inches. Wilkes made the first image in the series in 2009 when he was on assignment for New York Magazine in downtown Manhattan. The job required him to shoot the expanse of public park known as the High Line that had been built on the site of the 1.45-mile-long elevated rail structure running on the city’s West Side.

To get the shot he wanted—an epic overview of the High Line that still retained intimacy and a human connection—Wilkes photographed from about 40 or 50 feet off the ground in a cherry picker. (Initially, he scouted several nearby rooftops to shoot from but the view lacked both the intimacy and broad scale of the area that he was in search of.)

Using a 4 x 5 camera with a 39-megapixel digital back, Wilkes rotated his camera manually—because the scene was so expansive as it moved from south to north— from atop a tripod throughout the day. He shot hundreds of moments unfolding before him. He kept a constant f-stop but varied the shutter speed to allow for proper exposure as the sun eventually set. Periodically he and his assistant, who was also in the cherry picker, would load images onto a laptop and start creating rough comps to make sure he was getting what he needed.

The final panorama, edited down to between 30 and 50 images and blended seamlessly together in Photoshop, conveys a gradual shift from day to night. What begins on the left side of the image as a warm, bright day filled with picnickers, pedestrians and the blur of traffic below blends toward the right into a dark, somewhat desolate space void of people but eerily lit up by the glow of nearby buildings and lamp posts.

"My favorite thing as an artist is to create a print that actually gives the viewer a visceral experience when they see it,” says Wilkes. “I continue that experience with ‘Day Into Night.’ ”

 Wilkes photographs from one camera angle continually for up to 15 hours, then edits down the work to 25 or 30 select shots that are digitally blended into one photograph to capture what he says are “the fleeting moments throughout the day and night.”

Wilkes says he first thought about the idea of using multiple exposures to photograph time shifts while shooting for LIFE magazine on the set of director Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet in 1996. The magazine had asked him to create a panoramic gatefold but when he arrived on the set, he realized that the set was actually a huge square. “I decided to take the square and break it apart, à la David Hockney, using individual images,” says Wilkes. “I ended up shooting over 250 images that I then pasted together by hand.”

Wilkes explains that the aspect of passing time came into play in the center of the photograph. There, the stars (Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes) hugged as other actors surrounded them. “To the right side of the photograph was a huge mirror, probably 20 or 30 feet in height, and I asked them to kiss for the reflection image,” Wilkes explains. “That reflection does not match the center embrace and when you look at the photograph quickly you think the image in the mirror is a reflection. But then you realize that the reflection is a time change and a completely different moment. That idea stayed with me.”

A successful commercial shooter, Wilkes has embraced large-format photography in his fine-art work, “because it gives my all-important details greater depth,” he notes. “So much of my work is about levels of story.” That work includes his ethereal, haunting color series of images of neglected buildings on Ellis Island ( Ghosts of Freedom, W. W. Norton & Company, 2006); the dismantled and decaying factory scenes of Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania; his series of large-format photographs portraying victims of Hurricane Katrina (“In Katrina’s Wake: Restoring a Sense of Place”); and his three projects on China (“Old and New,” “Factories,” and “Three Gorges Dam”).

“My favorite thing as an artist is to create a print that actually gives the viewer a visceral experience when they see it,” says Wilkes. “I continue that experience with ‘Day Into Night.’ ” In the center of the High Line frame, for example, one can see several children pressed up against a glass partition of an overpass as they watch what’s going on below at street level and it’s easy to imagine their sense of awe and wonderment. Behind them are people sitting, eating, napping, texting on their phones and so on. Keep panning out and more and more of the surrounding buildings and sky broaden the scene and you feel the gradual shift from day to night just as it would happen in real life.

“I’ve been told the images have a Bruegel-like quality,” says Wilkes, who actually studied the Flemish painter’s famed landscape series “The Harvesters” which emphasized not just a time of year and the labors of the period, but the atmosphere and transformation of the landscape itself. “I love Bruegel’s scale, and the idea that he was able to do these epic views yet you could see these workers laboring within the depth of these wheat fields, all busy doing different things, and you could almost read their body language, you could almost feel the breath coming out of their lungs as they were lifting these heavy loads,” Wilkes describes. “I love that.”

He says that during his shoots he loves grabbing fleeting moments, and scanning “every inch of this enormous frame using extreme wide angle perspectives but within that context you can read body language and gesture.” He no longer rotates his camera, as he did during the High Line shoot, but instead establishes perspective, locks it in and doesn’t move the camera for the next 10 to 15 hours. He stays focused on a scene and grabs very specific moments. He even shuts the power off in the cherry picker so it stays still as well. Then he photographs one scene through his lens over and over. “With the new computers on the market today we can now multitask. My assistant usually begins a rough comp on location in Photoshop, and I’m still able capture images simultaneously.” On average he shoots 1,000 images and takes a very specifically edited group of what he considers unique moments during all times of day and night.

Since the High Line shoot he has been all over Manhattan continuing his pursuit of what he describes as “quintessential city portraits.” They include views of Times Square, Central Park in the winter, the Flatiron building and adjacent pedestrian mall (done last year on 9/11 to capture the beams of light from the memorial), Washington Square Park (located in the heart of Greenwich Village), and Gramercy Park (a private park between East 20th and 21st streets off of Park Avenue South). What he loves about shooting in and around Manhattan, he explains, is that there is an abundance of iconic views that meld his love of pure street photography and shooting iconic landscapes.

Central Park, Day To Night, 2010

 

His most recent shoot took place at Gramercy Park this past July. The foreground element of the fence was very important for him to capture, he says, because he wanted to define it as a very private park. “Developing the relationships between the foreground, the middle ground and the background are crucial here,” Wilkes explains. “I’m striving to capture the scope and the epic quality of the city and so I’m working on many different levels. It’s very challenging when you get up there because if you move a foot one way or a foot another way everything changes. It’s a structured process but it can also be a very dynamic, freefalling process. I never know who or what might appear in my frame.”
Wilkes says the nine images he’s created so far will be exhibited for the first time as a series, output at 48 x 60 inches, at ClampArt Gallery in Manhattan this month (the show opens on September 8 and runs through October 29).

At press time Wilkes and his wife, Bette who is also his producer, were already firming up plans and securing permits to shoot at Coney Island. “I have the best seat in the house, I really do,” he says, “and the best part is, no one really looks up or knows I am up there looking down on them. I have become the ultimate voyeur.”

 Via Photo District News