Stephen Wilkes. Day to Night. XL

English edition. If you stood still at an iconic point for 30 hours and limited yourself to observing, never closing your eyes, you still would not be able to capture all the details and emotions found in a panoramic photograph by Stephen Wilkes. Wilkes not only takes over 1,500 exposures from a fixed angle but also distills this visual information in his studio, meticulously composing the selected frames into a single image. Day to Night presents 60 epic panoramas created between 2009 and 2022, shot everywhere, from the African Serengeti to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, from the Grand Canyon to Coney Island, from Trafalgar Square to Times Square. Each composition is a work of love and patience. Wilkes waited more than two years to obtain permission to photograph Pope Francis while celebrating Easter mass in the Vatican, ultimately achieving a vivid picture in which the pontiff appears 10 times. The book also features extraordinary details: true works of art that highlight the stories contained in each image. A bride crosses Central Park; in Tanzania, zebras gather around an almost invisible watering hole during a drought; in Rio de Janeiro, surfers come and go while a man holds a sign that reads "No more than two questions per customer." "It is precisely these little stories, these details, that draw people into the photographs," says Wilkes. Once discovered, these mini narratives give each composition a personal and candid atmosphere.