Santa Fe Workshops Presents: Perspectives — Stephen Wilkes Day to Night, through Ellis Island, to "Jay Myself”

 

Via Santa Fe Workshops

January 12 - 15, 2021

In a world where humanity has become obsessively connected to personal devices, the ability to focus in a profound and contemplative way is becoming an endangered experience. These three lecture-format presentations promise to provide an engaging alternative to that trend.

Over the course of three days, fine-art and documentary photographer, National Geographic Society explorer, and filmmaker Stephen Wilkes takes you on a deep dive into his most important bodies of work.

Each day Stephen provides an exclusive in-depth look at his creative and technical processes, imbued with treasured stories and inspiration about a single project. This format allows him the rare opportunity to share the rich details of each one and weave them together to showcase the arc of his iconic career.

Day One - Day to Night

Day to Night represents Stephen's 10-year personal journey to capture fundamental elements of our world through the span of 24 hours, as light passes in front of a lens over the course of a full day. This synthesis of art and science is an exploration of time, memory, and history, as witnessed through the daily rhythms of our lives. For Stephen, it also became a meditation. The concept of Day to Night has redefined the medium of photography, melding aesthetics and technology to create a new way of seeing time, capturing history, and using imagery to convey a narrative. Blending these epic images of cityscapes and landscapes into a single photograph is a process that takes months to complete. Day to Night has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and exhibited around the world.

Day Two - Ellis Island

We explore Stephen's critically acclaimed photographic documentary project capturing the abandoned infectious disease hospital on Ellis Island. In 1998, a one-day assignment to the south side of Ellis Island led to a five-year photographic study of the island’s abandoned medical wards, where immigrants were detained before they could enter America. The project, which was featured on NPR and CBS Sunday Morning, eventually became Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom, named one of the top 10 photography books of 2006 by Time magazine. Stephen served for five years on the board of directors for Save Ellis Island.

Day Three - Jay Myself

A special screening of Jay Myself is made available for participants to watch between the webinar's second and third presentations. Then Stephen shares his fascinating story about the making of the film and his enduring 40-year friendship with its subject, Jay Maisel. The film charts the arduous logistical and emotional journey of Maisel—himself a renowned photographer—as he moves out of his six-story, 72-room home in New York City's Bowery. Variety's film critic Owen Gleiberman said: “After watching Jay Myself, you yourself may begin to see the world in a whole new way, as if you’d woken up to all the images that might have been invisible before, but only because you passed them by.”

These three presentations by a visionary photographer and filmmaker leave an inspirational and indelible mark on all who choose to open their eyes and minds to his technical and artistic mastery. You are invited to join Stephen and experience an unforgettable photographic journey through time. Tune in and let’s get busy!

Register here

Searching for the lost conscience of the nation

My View

The Santa Fe New Mexican

Searching for the lost conscience of the nation 

November 4, 2018

By Ann Lovell Rowe

After my church, the place in town I find most sacred and nourishing is Monroe Gallery at 112 Don Gaspar Ave. The owners continually have remarkable exhibits of photojournalism taking us back through our history and bringing us new, solid contemporary history.

Recently, their opening was of a photographer, Stephen Wilkes, and his work documenting the hospital island, one of the three islands that make up Ellis Island. The photos are deeply beautiful and profound, with light streaming through the abandoned buildings. Beside the photos are stories and words of people who were at the hospital; stories of making it through the process of entering our country.

One poignant memory for me was a little girl who had had polio and braces on her legs; her parents dressed her in a long skirt, and she made it through. There was much sadness there — long delays and being turned away — but there was a process. There was an understanding that receiving refugees and immigrants was an ordered part of our government and done with integrity.

Leaving the gallery, my husband and I walked toward San Francisco Street. Carefully settled at the opening to the parking lot was one of the homeless we see there often, a very attractive man with a nice white beard and very blue eyes, playing his guitar. We stopped to listen. Around him were several small packs and a small tag that said “Washington, D.C.” He was singing the folk song of Woody Guthrie, “Deportees.” It is a song of names — names of people killed when an airplane carrying these migrants back to Mexico crashed near our border. He said he was on his way to D.C. to sing there. A homeless troubadour. A true troubadour with a message. I wonder if he will make it to D.C., but for now he is singing for us.

The song tells the history of migrant workers who had finished the harvest of oranges and crops in California, and the overseer had sent them home by plane. The plane crashed, and they were buried in a common grave. Guthrie heard of this and went to Mexico to find the families of those killed. He found them, and the names of their loved ones, and returned to the site with grave markers with each of the names. And wrote this song. At the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Oct. 25, Joan Baez sang his song, but without telling the story; Arlo Guthrie has told it at his concerts at the Lensic, so I knew it immediately. Most don’t know the context. We need to know the song and remember that history.

Today we live with the most awful atrocities committed daily to our refugees and immigrants. A friend, a lawyer and former judge, just sent an email with the story of a foster family for one of the lost children who tried to adopt the child away from the parents. She was filled with tears and terror. Somehow, she was reunited with her mother. One example of the lost conscience of our country.

Ann Lovell Rowe is a writer and photographer who lives in Santa Fe.

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Monroe Gallery at AIPAD: Photography as history and photography as visual evidence

Irving Haberman

Holocaust Survivors arrive in New York City, 1947

Vintage gelatin silver print

 Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM, will dedicate much of its exhibit at the 2017 AIPAD Photography Show to images that exemplify photography as history and photography as visual evidence . Recently, documentary evidence has been denied or disputed by those in power, and coupled with the new administrations attacks on the press, the exhibit is a reminder that photojournalism is a vital and necessary component of a free society.

Steve Schapiro, along with many other photographers of the civil rights era, not only brought awareness to the injustice of racial discrimination; they made people feel the injustice. The Gallery will exhibit several of Schapiro’s iconic civil rights era photographs, including James Baldwin in Harlem (1963), Martin Luther King marching for voting rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas, James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, (1965), and John Lewis in Clarksdale, Mississippi (1963) alongside several photographs of the 2015 refugee crisis in Greece, the Balkans and Germany by Ashley Gilbertson, VII photographer and author of the book Bedrooms of The Fallen. There will also be vintage photographs of refugee immigrants to the United States by Irving Haberman and Eddie Adams, as well as a large format color print of the abandoned Ellis Island Tuberculosis Ward by Stephen Wilkes.

Ashley Gilbertson

Refugees, primarily from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, disembark on the island of Lesvos, Greece, 2015

Archival Pigment print

Another featured photograph is one Ashley Gilbertson made earlier this year of Trump Tower in response  to President Trump’s attacks on the press: “I want the president to know we will not cease in our attempts to provide transparency, hold those in power accountable, and report on issues that affect us as a global community. As always, our armor is honesty, hardened and honed by our fact checkers and editors. Our mission as the fourth estate didn't change on Friday–it remains the same as it always has. Truth to power.”

Ashley Gilbertson: Trump Tower, New York, 2017

Archival pigment print

Rounding out our exhibit are significant prints from two 94-year old master photojournalists, Art Shay and Tony Vaccaro.

Rounding out our exhibit are significant prints from two 94-year old master photojournalists, Art Shay and Tony Vaccaro.

At the age of 21, Tony Vaccaro was drafted into World War II, and by the spring of 1944 he was photographing war games in Wales. By June, now a combat infantryman in the 83rd Infantry Division, he was on a boat heading toward Omaha Beach, six days after the first landings at Normandy. Denied access to the Signal Corps, Tony was determined to photograph the war, and had his portable 35mm Argus C-3 with him from the start. For the next 272 days, Tony fought on the front lines of the war. He entered Germany in December 1944, a private in the Intelligence Platoon, tasked with going behind enemy lines at night. The HBO documentary film “Under Fire: The Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro” tells the story of how Tony survived the war, fighting the enemy while also documenting his experience at great risk, developing his photos in combat helmets at night and hanging the negatives from tree branches. The film also encompasses a wide range of contemporary issues regarding combat photography such as the ethical challenges of witnessing and recording conflict, the ways in which combat photography helps to define how wars are perceived by the public, and the sheer difficulty of staying alive while taking photos in a war zone.

 After the war, Tony remained in Germany to photograph the rebuilding of the country for Stars And Stripes magazine. Returning to the US in 1950, Tony started his career as a commercial photographer, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Look, Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Newsweek, and many more. Tony went on to become one the most sought after photographers of his day, photographing everyone from Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren to Pablo Picasso and Frank Lloyd Wright. Now 94, Tony still carries a camera and will be present in our booth #534 on Friday afternoon, March 30 during the AIPAD Photography Show.

Monroe Gallery of Photography will exhibit in booth #534 during the AIPAD Photography Show March 30 - April 2, 2017.

"When People Can See Time"

Via NPR All Tech Considered
February 19, 2016
Nina Gregory

Of all of the arts, photography may be the discipline most accustomed to the nudge of technology, and photographer and artist Stephen Wilkes fully embraces the challenge. His latest project, "Day to Night," takes on the idea of showcasing, in one composite still image, the transformation of a place over the course of a day.

Take his photo of Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. For 26 hours, Wilkes shot 2,200 photos without moving the camera and while suspended in the air in a tent-like structure with a little window, so that animals wouldn't see or hear him as he photographed them coming to a watering hole from sunrise to deep into the night.

"I photograph by hand; this is not a time lapse. ... It's my eye seeing very specific moments," Wilkes says. "I like to describe myself as a collector of magical moments."

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Day to Night, 2015

Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes                     

Once Wilkes has all the images, he picks the best moments of the day and the night and creates what he calls a master plate. Those images then get seamlessly blended into one single photograph, where time is on a diagonal vector, with sunrise beginning in the bottom right-hand corner. That process of creating a single image can take about four months — though it's photographed in a single day.

I spoke with Wilkes in Vancouver, ahead of his TED talk, about the powers of digital photography, the experience of looking in the face of time and the challenge of sharing emotion through an image. Below are some of the highlights of our conversation.

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Interview Highlights

On watching animal life unfold during the Serengeti shoot

Times Square, NYC, Day to Night, 201   

 Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes 

          

I'm changing time within the picture. As the sun is rotating, light is changing and all these animals, you can see time change on the light in the animals. It's all based on time. ... (At) sunrise you begin to see the watering hole is quiet and the animals migrate in as the sun rises. Wildebeests and zebras graze together; one has terrible eyes and the other has lousy hearing — the blind leading the deaf. There are meerkats. It was like watching the movie Jungle Book. As time is changing, you see the sun getting higher, you see the light begins to rotate and starts to go behind the animals. I'm watching them. Guess who else is watching them? A lion.

They have this whole process of coming in and going out, it's a rhythm. I'm telling the story based on time. It's such a complicated process and yet there's so much luck involved.

Pont de la Tournelle, Paris, Day to Night, 2013      

Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes             

On evolving as a photographer

I discovered digital in 2000 and started to realize, because I had to come through the process of analog ... I wanted to push the medium outward. So what I've been exploring is this concept of day-to-night, where I change time within a photograph. I'm really exploring the space-time continuum within a two-dimensional photograph. And it's really cool because I can tell stories that photographs could never tell before. Compressing an entire day into a single image, the best moments, allows me to share things on a narrative level that you just couldn't see.

On the power of seeing the face of time

The most exciting part of it really is how people respond to the work. It's an amazing, emotional thing. When people can see time, the face of time in a way, it's this thing we can never put our hands around. But yet, when you look at it, it makes you feel a different way and there's an emotional thing that happens and that's exciting. I just think it's the best time to be alive as a photographer, really. I think as technology keeps evolving the things you could only imagine or dream are at your fingertips now. It's just about where you want to go.

View from The Savoy, London, Day to Night, 2013      

Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes             

On the advantages of digital photography

When you can capture an image on a silicon chip versus a piece of film you can see it instantly, that's the first thing. For me, when I do one of my photographs, I can shoot 2,500 images in a single day. Now, if I was doing that with an 8x10 camera, which is the image quality I have in my digital back*, that would be 2,500 sheets of 8x10 film. It would be impossible to do what I'm doing, just the visualization of that would be impossible — and financially, to boot. And my assistant would probably jump out of the cherry picker!

*Editor's Note: A digital back is a piece of equipment you can add to the back of a film camera to modify it to take digital images.

On the high level of detail in digital photography

So if I'm a storyteller, I love that, suddenly things that were insignificant are really significant now. And that's the power of what's happening now. Eventually photography is going to look like a window; you're going to have a visceral experience with my pictures on the wall. Because the way you'll see into my pictures is almost the way the eye sees, and that's the way it's going. For me, I want you to feel the way I felt when I stood there and took the picture.


On the future of photo printing
I work with a master printer in New York and I actually print on conventional photographic paper because of the depth perception. I really want to enhance that, but there are so many new technologies that are coming out in terms of 3-D printing and all kinds of different things. Who knows where we're going to be five, 10, 15 years from now based on what's happening and the speed of what's happening.



View the full Day To Night Collection here.

The Picture Show

Eerie Ellis Island, Then And Now

Stephen Wilkes: Photography is dead? Hogwash.

Via The Ottawa Citizen
Peter Simpson - The Big Beat

Published on: November 16, 2015

 

Still photography was dead, or so they said. Ubiquitous video would make still photography obsolete, anachronistic, unnecessary.

 

The photographer Stephen Wilkes knows otherwise.

 

“To me, this is the most exciting moment in the history of photography. The potential to explore things that we’ve never done in a still photograph are so great,” says Wilkes, by phone from his studio in Westport, Connecticut. “I’ve been very conscious of using new technologies in the medium to push the medium outward.”

 

His “Day to Night” images, which compress multiple frames of the same scene taken from dawn to dusk — but which are not time-lapse photography — demonstrate his drive to show familiar as anew.

 

To me, what Day to Night is, it’s changing the way you look at a still photograph,” says Wilkes, who will be at the National Gallery Nov. 19 for the U.S. embassy’s art-lecture series, Contemporary Conversations.

 

I chat with Wilkes for 51 minutes and, I confess, I’m not entirely clear on how he made the Day for Night photographs, most famously his image of Barack Obama’s first inauguration as president of the United States.

 

 

Presidential Inauguration, Day to Night, 2013, by Stephen Wilkes

 (Archival Digital Type‑C print. Courtesy the artist)

 

The inaugural photograph appears to be a single image of more than 800,000 people crowded onto the Mall leading to the steps of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Far in the distance, the president stands with his hand raised, swearing fealty to the constitution.

 

Curiously, an orange dawn breaks on the right side of the frame, while dark night creeps on the left. The people on the right side may be only a few hundred feet from the people on the left, but they are also separated by 10 hours.

 

Wilkes was amid the vast crowd and 50 feet in the air on a scissor lift, and he shot as many as 2,500 frames from sun up to sundown on “a bloody cold day,” the entire time a slave to precision.

 

“If I shift my weight every time I take a picture, if my feet are not in the exact same position, then my horizon line changes,” he says, and describes how he had to put down tape marks for his feet, and for those of his assistant. It must have looked like a crime scene up there.

 

He then whittled the hundreds of frames down to 50, and made them into a sort of collage, “almost like a time capsule, on this day, in this place. . . . It’s like a giant puzzle I do in my head as I work.”

 

 

  Corridor # 9, Island 3, Ellis Island, 1998,

                             (Archival Digital Type‑C print. Courtesy the artist)

 

 

The only obvious hint that it’s a composite image, other than the weird dichotomy of light and dark, are the differing views of the president shown on huge video screens at the side of the Mall.

 

“Day to Night is almost a synthesis of all the things that I love about the medium of photography. . .  In a way I’m putting a face on time,” Wilkes says, and then talks of how we remember, together, a time that’s passed. “I’m very interested in the idea of what our collective memory is, as a species.”

 

I’ve already gone well over my allotted time for our interview — usually 20 minutes or so — but Wilkes, after two decades of work, remains infectiously enthusiastic.

 

He describes at length his experiences while photographing abandoned, decaying structures at Ellis Island in New York harbour, once the arrival point for millions of immigrants to the U.S., and at the Bethlehem Steel plant.

 

“There was a palpable sense of humanity in these historic places that, in a way, I never really understood or realized you could really capture,” he says.  “I think the greatest rewards have been when people see these multiple bodies of work that I’ve done and they say to me, ‘I can feel my ancestors in your pictures. I can feel the people in your photographs.’”

 

He talks passionately of photographing the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on New Orleans, and of shooting nudes for the first time, in a remarkable series, after 9/11. “Our lives were turned upside down. I felt like I wanted to go back and think about what the creation was like.”

 

He recounts going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time, at age 14, and being deeply influenced by a Bruegel the Elder painting, the Harvesters. “I remember walking up to it and looking closely at these men in the field, and it was almost as if I could feel the sweat on their brow.”

 

Wilkes had been taking photographs for two years at that point, and says “nothing ever made me feel like that. I loved the idea of capturing a moment on film.”

 

Decades later, his belief in photography  as an catalyst for change is undiminished.

 

“I find that by creating images that have an inherent beauty, people will look at them for just a second, and if I get you for just a second, then I think I can make you think a little deeper about what I’m showing you.” And, emphatically, “The power of the single image is the way.”

 

As for the photography-is-dead crowd, let them be damned.

 

What: Stephen Wilkes, Contemporary Conversations

When & where: 6 p.m., Nov. 19 at the National Gallery. Tickets, free.

 

 www.gallery.ca/conversations

 

The fourth lecture in the 2015 series "Contemporary Conversations" will feature Stephen Wilkes

Via CNW

OTTAWA, Nov. 5, 2015 /CNW/ - The Embassy of the United States in Ottawa and the U.S. Department of State's Office of Art in Embassies, in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), will welcome renowned American artist Stephen Wilkes for the fourth lecture in the Contemporary Conversations series on November 19.

Contemporary Conversations (#artconvoAIE) brings internationally recognized American artists to Canada for a series of public lectures at the NGC intended to stimulate conversation around issues that transcend borders, and topics that inspire, teach, and create connections. Works by the first four artists in the series are also included in the Art in Embassies exhibition at the residence of U.S. Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman and Mrs. Vicki Heyman. Wilkes' photograph Corridor # 9, Island 3, Ellis Island (1998) is currently featured at the residence, while another of his works, Presidential Inauguration, Day to Night (2013), can be found on display at the Embassy.

Wilkes, an internationally acclaimed fine art and commercial photographer, is well-known for capturing iconic images of American spaces and places – from Ellis Island to a Presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. This latest edition of the speaker series will be moderated by U.S. Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman.

"Stephen is on the cutting edge of technique in digital fine art photography, and he uses his camera and talent to preserve memories and to conserve treasures. His photographs strike me first with their sheer beauty, and then I am drawn in deeper by the subtext of the work. Bruce and I have been fans of his work for years - we continue to feel inspired by the impact of his images and how they provoke conversations that can serve as an impetus for change." said Vicki Heyman.

"We are delighted to have Stephen Wilkes at the National Gallery of Canada as part of the Contemporary Conversations series, which has been so successful.  The conversation between this accomplished American artist and the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Mr. Bruce Heyman, promises to be engaging," said National Gallery of Canada Director and CEO Marc Mayer.

In February 2015, Marie Watt was the first artist featured in the Contemporary Conversations series at the NGC in Ottawa. Nick Cave participated in second installment in May and Eric Fischl spoke in September.  

Registration for the Stephen Wilkes lecture opened October 19. Free admission: RSVP before 12 November at rsvp@gallery.ca to reserve your spot. Please note that guests will be seated in order of arrival. Empty seats will be filled 10 minutes prior to the start of the event. There will also be a live broadcast of the event in the adjacent Lecture Hall.

More information about the series can be found at www.gallery.ca/conversations/en.

About Stephen Wilkes

For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art and commercial photography. In 1999 he completed a personal project photographing the unrestored areas of Ellis Island: the ruined

landscape of the infectious disease and psychiatric hospital wings, where children and adults alike were detained before they could enter the United States. Through his photographs and video work, Wilkes has inspired and helped secure six million dollars toward the restoration for the south side of the island.

Wilkes' latest body of work entitled Day to Night embodies epic cityscapes with fleeting moments captured throughout the transition from day to the night.  His photographic process entails continuously shooting from one camera angle for approximately fifteen hours. A select group of images are then electronically blended into one photograph. Each photograph takes approximately four months to create.

 

Stephen Wilkes "Remnants" continues at Monroe Gallery of Photography through November 22.

“Unframed — Ellis Island,” by the French artist JR; Inspired by Stephen Wilkes

Stephen Wilkes: Isolation ward, curved corridor, Island 3, Ellis Island

Via The New York Times




A new installation, “Unframed — Ellis Island,” by the French artist JR, which brings this landmark building, its patients and staff members, to grainy but wrenching life. It is the first time in 60 years that the Ellis Island hospital has been open to the public. Tickets go on sale Thursday for guided tours that begin on Oct. 1.


Unframed — Ellis Island” is part of JR’s larger “Unframed” series that puts archival photos in new contexts in places like Marseille, France; São Paulo, Brazil; and Washington. He was introduced to this project by a book, “Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom,” the photographer Stephen Wilkes’s exploration of the hospital in its wildest state, and quickly became obsessed with the grounds. Finishing the installation this month, he and his small team would arrive in the morning and wander all day, scouting out homes for their century-old charges, before taking the tourist ferry back to Manhattan, toting ladders and paste buckets.

“It’s a really powerful place,” said Mr. Wilkes, who photographed it the hospital from 1998 to 2003, and is now on the board of Save Ellis Island. He was particularly moved by the realization that some patients could see the Statue of Liberty from their sickbeds. “She’s so close, and for many people who came to America and who never got out of that hospital, they never got to see any more than that,” Mr. Wilkes said.

Their emotion lingered. “I would feel almost human energy in these empty rooms,” he said.

Read the full article here.

View Stephen Wilkes' Ellis Island collection here.

STEPHEN WILKES - DAY TO NIGHT

 

 

Photograph by Hance Partners/Image Craft ©All Rights Reserved

Stephen Wilkes' acclaimed Day To Night series is featured on today's TIME LightBox, see it here.

The TIME magazine print edition features an 8 page photo essay, and the issue will be on stands tomorrow, Friday dated November 25, 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related: Stephen Wilkes Day To Night featured on CBS Sunday Morning

 

To Do Monday: Stephen Wilkes Talks "Day To Night"

Sponsored by Adorama and Canon

Stephen Wilkes: The Big Picture

Monday, Dec 3, 2012

5:30PM - 7:30PM

Event location:

The Adorama Building, 42 West 18th Street 5th Floor

Event Description:

Stephen Wilkes is well known internationally for his fine art and commercial photography, and during this evening's presentation he'll be showing and discussing the pictures, themes, and genres that are signatures of his work. Many of his images, at once epic in scale all share a unique human narrative, showcasing his fascination with scale, and reflecting his passion for making 'The Big Picture.'

He'll show his latest fine art series, "Day to Night', where Stephen photographs a scene from the same perspective during a minimum of 10 hours, as he says, "capturing a fluid visual narrative of day into night within a single frame."

Stephen's assignments and projects have taken him around the globe, where his continuing interest in architectural imagery and how rapid industrial growth impacts our world and environment. He'll be showing examples that range from his series on China's transformation from it's rural and natural beauty to teeming cities as an industrial behemoth, to a recent commercial assignment in Mumbai that combined his expertise shooting on location in challenging situations and combining his exciting visualization capturing the essence and energy of a place. He'll also be showing images from his Ellis Island series, and from the Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill series among others.

Throughout the presentation, be prepared to look at things differently; you will see and hear about the symbiotic relationship between his commercial and fine art work, as Stephen shares how he manages to balance an active commercial and fine art career.

Register here  (event expired)


(A selection of Stephen Wilkes' Day To Night photographs are currently on view at the gallery. UPDATE: Contact the gallery for news about the newest international addition to the collection: Jerusalem, Day To Night.)

Biography: Stephen Wilkes

  For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art and commercial photography. His photographs have been exhibited in both galleries and museums, and featured in the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Time, Sports Illustrated, London Sunday Times, and Travel + Leisure.

In 2000, Epson America commissioned him to create a millennial portrait of the United States, a 52-day odyssey that resulted in a critically acclaimed exhibition that traveled to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

The monograph, Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom was published in 2006. Stephen was featured on Weekend Edition with Scott Simon of NPR, CBS Sunday Morning with Martha Teichner and the book received high critical acclaim including Time Magazine's 5 Best Photography Books of The Year, 2006. His newest body of work is titled Day to Night. The work embodies epic cityscapes of New York with fleeting moments throughout the day to night. Stephen photographs from one camera angle continuously for approximately 15 hours. A select group of images are then electronically blended into one photograph. The photographs have been exhibited at Clampart Gallery in NYC, and Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe. CBS Sunday Morning  featured Stephen in a segment on his process in creating Day to Night images on November 11, 2012.

In 1999 he completed a personal project photographing the south side of Ellis Island: the ruined landscape of the infectious disease and psychiatric hospital wings, where children and adults alike were detained before they could enter America. Through his photographs and video work, Stephen has inspired and helped secure $6 million in funding towards the restoration for the south side of the island.

Educated at Syracuse University's S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, his awards and honors include the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography, Photographer of the Year from Adweek Magazine, Fine Art Photographer of the Year 2004 Lucie Award, and the Epson Creativity Award.
Stephen's work is in the permanent collection of the International Museum of Photography in the George Eastman House, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Dow Jones Collection, Griffin Museum of Photography, Jewish Museum of New York, Library of Congress and numerous private collections.

He also shoots advertising campaigns for many of the worlds leading agencies and corporations, including, SAP, IBM, PepsiCo, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, American Express, Nike, Sony, Verizon, IBM, AT&T, Rolex, Honda, J.W.T., EuroRSCG, McCann Erickson, Ogilvy & Mather, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, and Rubin Postaer among others.

THE Magazine Review: Stephen Wilkes: Day to Night

Installation Photograph by Stephen Wilkes

The Magazine
Critcal Reflections
June, 2012

Iris McLister



Are you a city person? Do you like hailing a taxi or looking upward to see the tippy top of a skyscraper?


Maybe you’re more of a country mouse like me, and being among millions of people with places to go and people to see leaves you cold. My only, very brief, visit to New York City, several years ago, left my feathers substantially ruffled. The rush, the anonymity, the impossible task of trying to be nonchalant about riding the subway; the everywhere presence of interesting-looking people I’d never know or even meet.

No, not all of us are city people. Contemporary photographer Stephen Wilkes chose New York City as his subject for his series Day to Night, capturing moments of astonishing urban beauty in luscious, vivid color. His unique digitally manipulated, time-lapse photography allows the course of an entire day to be viewed in one image, thereby exposing the city’s constant energy while suggesting its ultimate stability.

We’ve all seen pictures of the Empire State Building or the Brooklyn Bridge at dusk; these aren’t those. The first thing you notice about the photos in Day to Night is the uncanny quality of light they capture; they look lit up from within. Wilkes has been a commercial photographer for many years, working for major publications like Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, and Time. As a fine-art photographer, his work reaches similarly wide audiences and often has political undertones. A series shot on Ellis Island depicts eerie scenes of dilapidated buildings and neglected grounds—it garnered so much attention that it helped prompt Congress to grant the area millions of preservation dollars and designate it as a “living ruin.” In a 2008 body of photographs taken in China, Wilkes conveyed in equal measure the sterile coldness of sprawling factories and the humanity of their workers.

For this more neutral, but visually dazzling, body of work, the artist began by choosing an iconic New York City location like Central Park or Washington Square. Perched fifty feet above ground level in a rented boom lift, the artist spent ten to fifteen hours taking hundreds of pictures of the same scene throughout the course of a day, painstakingly ensuring that every shot came from the same, fixed perspective.

Wilkes then blended together dozens or so carefully chosen shots with digital photo software to forge utterly seamless portrayals of a day’s shift into night. Painstakingly detailed and full of nuance, a single image can take months to create. Photographs take on time-travel qualities in their ability to relate distinct times of day in just one frame. In Gramercy Park, this city landmark becomes a dense forest, composed so that the vermillion shock of tall trees in the foreground gives way, somewhat ominously, to darkened evening skies. Apartment building windows are so warmly and clearly lit you can almost make out figures, and the bizarre lighting, which Wilkes sometimes manipulates into veritable fluorescence, suggests the contrivance of a movie set or a starkly illuminated dollhouse. In Park Avenue, rows of golden yellow cabs stream down traffic lanes in a scene of ecstatic motion. Thrillingly bright light beams downwards onto the avenue, and an inky-dark, cloudy sky makes a perplexing and delightful backdrop. This is a remarkably beautiful rendering of an urban scene—and it feels consummately new in its depiction. Coney Island is more literal in its representation of a day’s transition from morning to night; the evening portion on the left side of the picture gradually turns to brilliant daylight on the right. The neon blur of the Ferris wheel against the night sky gives way to the sunbathers and sailboats creating areas of startling, but somehow organic, contrast. Of these photographs, which Wilkes calls “quintessential city portraits,” the artist says: “You realize that the pedestrians are communicating, the cabs [are communicating], all these elements are coming together and creating a complex life form… that’s how the city works.”

In this eye-catching exhibition, Stephen Wilkes manages to inject scenes of urban New York with a dynamism that conjures universally relatable themes of renewal and change. This work encourages us to celebrate and share in the ineffably triumphant quality of New York City—and it’s got this country girl yearning for a visit to the Big Apple.

The exhibition has been extended through June 24, 2012.

Photo Courtesy Hance Partners

Abandoned Ellis Island – And How It Can Be Saved

Via Scouting New York:

The following article was produced in participation with the Partners in Preservation program, which will be awarding $3 million in grants to historic sites across New York City based on your votes – so go vote now!

Chances are, when you think of Ellis Island, you picture just one building…

The “Main Building,” a Beaux-Arts masterpiece built in 1900, through which millions of immigrants passed until its closure in 1954. Today, it houses the Immigration Museum, and if you’ve ever visited on a school field trip, or passed through on a vacation, this is where you spent your day.

One question: while you were there, did you happen to turn around…

…and notice the row of gorgeous Belgian-style buildings across the water? The ones that seem to be totally abandoned?

Full article with numerous photograph here.

Monroe Gallery of Photography is currently exhibiting Stephen Wilkes' "Day To Night" collection.

 

Perhaps Wilkes’ most ambitious project was photographing the south side of Ellis Island (1998 – 2003). With his exclusive photographs and video work, Wilkes was able to help secure $6 million in funding to restore the south side of the island. Today all that remains of the past are Wilkes' haunting images. These photographs have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and have won numerous awards including American Photographer, The Art Directors Club, Applied Arts Magazine, Graphis and other industry awards. Wilkes continues to be involved with his passion for Ellis Island, working with the "Save Ellis Island" foundation. Wilkes received the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for magazine photography, and in 2004 he received the Lucie Award for Fine Art Photographer Of The Year Award. His work is in the permanent collection of several important museum collections. Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom was published by W.W. Norton & Company in the fall of 2006, and was accompanied by a major exhibition at Monroe Gallery of Photography October 6 – January 7, 2007.

On Ellis Island, Examining Those Who Arrived Before and After

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Stephen Wilkes: Isolation ward, curved corridor, Island 3

Via The New York Times

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

The Ellis Island Immigration Museum is expanding its scope to include all immigrants,

not just who arrived on the island.

Officials of Ellis Island estimate that as many as one in three Americans can trace their ancestry to immigrants who landed there from overseas.

Now, the officials are focusing on the other roughly 200 million newcomers who arrived in the United States before Ellis Island opened its doors or after it stopped becoming a portal for immigrants. The national historic site in New York Harbor is halfway through a transformation into a more inclusive National Museum of Immigration.

“The Ellis story is a finite story; American immigration is continuing,” said David Luchsinger, the National Park Service superintendent who oversees the island and the Statue of Liberty.
And Stephen A. Briganti, president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, said, “If we didn’t tell the current story we would be obsolete in 25 years.”

As part of a $20 million project privately financed by the foundation, 20,000 square feet, comprised of a former railroad ticket office and offices for Park Service staff, are being converted into a new museum that encompasses the story of immigration from the 16th century through today. The first phase, which covers 1550 to 1892, when Ellis Island began operating as an immigration station, opened informally last fall. The second phase, which focuses on the period after 1924—, when strict quotas on foreigners were imposed and the island was used primarily as a detention center—, and especially on the influx following World War II, is scheduled to open about a year from now with a formal ceremony to celebrate the new museum.

Full article here.

57 YEARS AGO, ELLIS ISLAND CLOSED

Stephen Wilkes: Tuberculosis Ward, Statue of Liberty, Island 3, Ellis Island

November 12 marks the 57th anniversary of the closing of Ellis Island, a facility that will forever be linked to the concept of the American dream. From 1892 to 1954, over 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island. They came from Ireland, England, Germany, Italy, and many other countries, and together they formed the backbone of America.

beginning in 1998,  Stephen Wilkes immortalized the remaining ruins in his epic "Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom" project.

For the anniversary, Life.com has a slideshow "Faces of Ellis Island".

JANUARY 1, 1892: ELLIS ISLAND OPENS

Stephen Wilkes: Curved Corridor, Isolation Ward, Island 3, Ellis Island

From 1892 to 1954, over twelve million immigrants entered the United States through the portal of Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor. Ellis Island is located in the upper bay just off the New Jersey coast, within the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Through the years, this gateway to the new world was enlarged from its original 3.3 acres to 27.5 acres mostly by landfill obtained from ship ballast and possibly excess earth from the construction of the New York City subway system.

 

Stephen Wilkes: TB Ward, Statue of Liberty, Island 3, Ellis Island

Prior to 1890, the individual states (rather than the Federal government) regulated immigration into the United States. Castle Garden in the Battery (originally known as Castle Clinton) served as the New York State immigration station from 1855 to 1890 and approximately eight million immigrants, mostly from Northern and Western Europe, passed through its doors.

 

Stephen Wilkes: Woman's Ward, Island 2, Ellis Island

It soon became apparent that Castle Garden was ill-equipped and unprepared to handle the growing numbers of immigrants arriving yearly. Unfortunately compounding the problems of the small facility were the corruption and incompetence found to be commonplace at Castle Garden.

The Federal government intervened and constructed a new Federally-operated immigration station on Ellis Island. While the new immigration station on Ellis Island was under construction, the Barge Office at the Battery was used for the processing of immigrants. The new structure on Ellis Island, built of "Georgia pine" opened on January 1, 1892; Annie Moore, a 15 year-old Irish girl, accompanied by her two brothers entered history and a new country as she was the very first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island on January 2. Over the next 62 years, more than 12 million were to follow through this port of entry.

Source: ellisisland.org

View Stephen Wilkes' full Ellis Island collection here.

Related: American Express Gives $100,000 to Help Ellis Island Group




Ellis Island: "Ghosts of Freedom" is a collection of large format color cibachrome photographs of the abandoned buildings on the southern side of Ellis Island. Photographed over five years (1998 - 2003), "Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom" is visual history of the benign neglect of the medical facilities and dormitories of the historic immigration center, which at that time, unlike the Great Hall, had not yet been restored. Wilkes' photographs capture the haunting beauty of this century old building. "Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom" is a rich visual tapestry evoking the ghosts of the millions of immigrants who passed through these halls on their first stop in America.

American Express Gives $100,000 to Help Ellis Island Group

Stephen Wilkes: Corridor #9, Island 2, Ellis Island

Back in April, we wrote about an article by Robin Pogrebin in The New York Times reporting that "Save Ellis Island, a nonprofit charged with restoring that historic immigrant gateway to America, may not be able to save itself. The group has run out of money." There was an urgent appeal: Funds Sought to Continue Restoration at Ellis Island; abandoned buildings on the southern side of Ellis Island immortalized in Stephen Wilkes' photographs.

Today, The New York Times reports that "American Express Gives $100,000 to Help Ellis Island Group".

By Robin Pogrebin


On the brink of extinction last spring, the nonprofit organization charged with restoring Ellis Island will benefit from a $100,000 gift from American Express, the credit card company is to announce on Thursday.

"It’s an enormous boost,” said Judith R. McAlpin, the president of the organization, Save Ellis Island. “American Express has long been associated with the very best in historic preservation. It’s like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”

The donation, the company said, was prompted by an article in The New York Times about how Save Ellis Island was struggling to continue the restoration of 29 buildings on the 27.5 acre historic immigrant gateway to America. “We’re trying to help them help themselves so they’re able to raise more money not just for the restoration of the buildings — they need general operating support,” Timothy J. McClimon, president of the American Express Foundation, said. “People are in love with the buildings, they’re passionate about the buildings — that’s kind of the easy money. But how do you sustain yourself as an organization?”

What Save Ellis Island needs most, Mr. McClimon said, is to build its fund-raising capacity by strengthening its board and development staff. As a result, American Express will make its donation through the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which will provide expertise. The trust included Ellis Island on its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places twice in the 1990s.

Mr. McClimon left open the possibility that American Express might contribute more in the future. “We’re very positive about Save Ellis Island,” he said. “We think they have great potential.”

See Stephen Wilkes' Ellis Island Collection here.

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REMINDER: HELP SAVE ELLIS ISLAND THIS SUNDAY, NOV. 7

Stephen Wilkes: Corridor #9, Island 3, Ellis Island

On Sunday, November 7, join the Save Ellis Island Foundation for a very special tour and talk with Stephen Wilkes.


Included will be an illustrated presentation by renowned photographer Stephen Wilkes, who will discuss his work and the personal project that involved photographing the south side of Ellis Island...the inspiration for his poignant book "Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom".

For the very first time, since the book was published, Stephen Wilkes visits Ellis Island to present his work, taking us on a journey to our collective past. The event begins at 10:00 am, starting with a fabulous brunch followed by Stephen's presentation and finally a emotional and inspirational walking tour of the unrestored south side Hospital Buildings.

More information and details here.

SAVE THE DATE - A CONVERSATION WITH STEPHEN WILKES: SAVE ELLIS ISLAND

Stephen Wilkes: Curved Corridor, Island 2, Ellis Island

On Sunday, November 7, join the Save Ellis Island Foundation for a very special tour and talk with Stephen Wilkes.

Included will be an illustrated presentation by renowned photographer Stephen Wilkes, who will discuss his work and the personal project that involved photographing the south side of Ellis Island...the inspiration for his poignant book "Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom".

For the very first time, since the book was published, Stephen Wilkes visits Ellis Island to present his work, taking us on a journey to our collective past. The event begins at 10:00 am, starting with a fabulous brunch followed by Stephen's presentation and finally a emotional and inspirational walking tour of the unrestored south side Hospital Buildings.

-Each guest will be presented with an autographed copy of Stephen's book, "Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom" and a few additional surprises in a gift bag provided by your host, Save Ellis Island

-Seats are limited for this one-time fundraising event

-Donations: Individual $1,000 - Order tickets on line. For corporate reservations, please call 973-347-8400

-Complimentary transportation provided from Battery park, New York City and Liberty State Park, New Jersey

-To lean more, visit http://www.saveellisisland.org/

Ticket information here.

"In the southern shadows of Ellis Island’s Great Hall, forgotten by history and ill-equipped in its battle with nature, I came upon the ruins of a vast hospital: the contagious-disease wards and isolation rooms for the people whose spirits carried them across oceans but whose bodies failed them, just inches from Paradise. What I was obsessed to do, almost as if I was chosen to do it, was document the light and the energy and living spirit of this place. I added no light of my own, nor any artifice of the photographic craft. I wasn’t simply interested in graphics born from the patina of ruin. I just wanted to record the place as I found it."

--Stephen Wilkes


View Stephen Wilkes' Ellis Island Collection here.

NPR PICTURE SHOW: EERIE ELLIS ISLAND with photos by Stephen Wilkes

Nation Public Radio

by Claire O'Neill

August 20, 2010
In grade school, I was obsessed with Ellis Island, which I attribute to a fascination with my grandmother's Irish accent. In my mind, it was a bustling, brimming, turn of the century checkpoint for immigrants in search of brighter prospects.

Corridor #9, Island 3: "There was a palatable sense of collaboration with an unknown force when I made this photograph. Red afternoon sunlight created an aura at the end of the corridor unlike any light I have ever seen"--Stephen Wilkes

 

In Stephen Wilkes' mind, on the other hand, Ellis Island means decay. He discovered the island's abandoned hospitals while on a photo assignment in the 1990s, and it quickly devolved into obsession (of course, I can sympathize). For five years he had free reign of the island's ghostly buildings.

Wilkes' photo project, Ellis Island: Ghosts Of Freedom, shows the somber side of immigration — the side you don't see while on island tours. For many, the dream of a better life terminated in Ellis Island hospitals, where they were detained at any sign of disease. In one of Wilkes' images, the Statue of Liberty is reflected in a mirror. "I suddenly imagined a petite Eastern European woman rising out of her bed every morning," he writes in the caption."Seeing the reflection would be the closest she'd ever come to freedom."


The hospitals were closed in 1954 and basically left untouched, except by the elements of nature, and unseen, until Wilkes came along. Empty rooms, peeling paint, a lonely shoe left on a table — this deterioration is what Wilkes finds beautiful. His meditative studies of light and composition guide the viewer through Ellis Island's dark side, oddly illuminated by an afternoon glow.

His book was featured on Weekend Edition Saturday in 2006; and now, his photographs are part of a new exhibition at the James A. Michener Art Museum outside of Philadelphia. (Related review here) Brian Peterson, the exhibition curator, has made an interesting contrast by pairing Wilkes' color prints with the early documentary photographs of Lewis Hine.

Ellis Island, 1926 

Lewis W. Hine/Courtesy of George Eastman House

I've never actually visited Ellis Island, but after seeing Wilkes photographs, I just might have to revisit and old obsession.
 
 
Original post here with slide show of photographs.
 
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