Stephen Wilkes. Day to Night. XL

English edition. If you stood still at 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 Stephen Wilkes panoramic photograph. 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 labor of love and patience. Wilkes waited over two years for permission to photograph Pope Francis as he celebrated Easter Mass at the Vatican, ultimately achieving a vivid portrait in which the pontiff appears 10 times.
The book also features extraordinary details: true works of art that highlight the stories contained within 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 while a man holds a sign that reads, “No more than two questions per customer.” “It’s 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 feel.