Stephen Wilkes Art

Stephen Wilkes is a photographer born in 1957 in New York. He started photography at the age of 12. He received his BS in photography from Syracuse University S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications with a minor in business management from the Whitman School of Management in 1980. Since opening his studio in New York City in 1983, photographer Stephen Wilkes has built an unprecedented body of work and a reputation as one of America’s most iconic photographers, widely recognized for his fine art, editorial and commercial work. His photographs are included in the collections of the George Eastman Museum, James A. Michener Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Dow Jones Collection, Carl and Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, Jewish Museum of New York, Library of Congress, Snite Museum of Art, The Historic New Orleans Collection, Museum of the City of New York, 9/11 Memorial Museum and numerous private collections. His editorial work has appeared in and on the covers of, leading publications such as the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Time, Fortune, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and many others. Wilkes’s early career interpretations of Mainland China, California’s Highway One and impressionistic Burned Objects set the tone for a series of career-defining projects that catapulted him to the top of the photographic landscape. In 1998, a one-day assignment to the south side of Ellis Island led to a five year photographic study of the island’s long abandoned medical wards where immigrants were detained before they could enter America. Through his photographs and video, Wilkes helped secure $6 million toward the restoration of the south side of the island. A monograph based on the work, Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom, was published in 2006 and was named one of Time magazine’s 5 Best Photography Books of the Year. The work was also featured on NPR and CBS Sunday Morning. In 2000, Epson America commissioned Wilkes to create a millennial portrait of the United States, America In Detail, a 52-day odyssey that was exhibited in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Day to Night, Wilkes’s most defining project, began in 2009. These epic cityscapes and landscapes, portrayed from a fixed camera angle for up to 30 hours, capture fleeting moments of humanity as light passes in front of his lens over a full day. Blending these images into a single photograph takes months to complete. Day to Night has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning as well as dozens of other prominent media outlets and with a grant from the National Geographic Society, was recently extended to include America’s National Parks in celebration of their centennial anniversary and Bird Migration for the 2018 Year of the Bird. Wilkes’s work documenting the ravages of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy has brought heightened awareness to the realities of global climate change. He was commissioned by the Annenberg Space for Photography to revisit New Orleans in 2013 after documenting Hurricane Katrina for the World Monuments Fund. And his images were exhibited with his photographs on Hurricane Sandy in the 2014 “Sink or Swim, Designing for a Sea of Change” exhibition. Wilkes directorial debut, the documentary film, Jay Myself, world premiered to a sold out crowd at DOC NYC on November 11, 2018. The film is an in-depth look into the world of photographer Jay Maisel and his move out of his 35,000 sq. foot building at 190 Bowery. Wilkes was a speaker at the TEDx 2016 titled “Dream Conference on his Day to Night” series. In 2017 Wilkes was commissioned by the US Embassy, Ottawa to create a Day to Night photograph of Canada’s 150th anniversary of Confederation. Despite his intense dedication to personal projects, Wilkes continues to shoot advertising campaigns for the world’s leading agencies and corporations, including, Netflix, OppenheimerFunds, SAP, IBM, Capital One, The New Yorker, Johnson & Johnson, DHL, American Express, Nike, Sony, Verizon, IBM, AT&T, Rolex and Honda. Wilkes’s extensive 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, Time Magazine Top 10 Photographs of 2012, Sony World Photography Professional Award 2012, Adobe Breakthrough Photography Award 2012 and Prix Pictet, Consumption 2014. His board affiliations include the Advisory Board of the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications, Save Ellis Island Board of Directors, on which he served for 5 years and the Goldring Arts Journalism Board. Wilkes currently lives and maintains his studio in Westport, Connecticut. He is represented by Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York, Fahey Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe, Holden Luntz Gallery in Palm Beach and ProjectB Gallery in Milan.