Stephen Wilkes. Day to Night. XL

English edition. If you stood still in an iconic spot for 30 hours and simply observed, never closing your eyes, you still wouldn't be able to capture all the detail and emotion 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, painstakingly composing selected frames into a single image.
Day to Night features 60 epic panoramas created between 2009 and 2022, shot everywhere from Africa's Serengeti to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, from the Grand Canyon to Coney Island, from Trafalgar Square to Times Square. Each composition is a labor of love and patience. Wilkes waited more than two years to get permission to photograph Pope Francis as he celebrated Easter mass at the Vatican, eventually resulting in a vivid painting 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 walks through Central Park; in Tanzania, zebras gather around a nearly invisible watering hole during a drought; in Rio de Janeiro, surfers come and go as a man holds a sign that reads "No more than two questions per customer." “It's these little stories, these details, that draw people to photographs,” says Wilkes. Once discovered, these mini narratives give each composition a personal and candid feel.