Stephen Wilkes Ellis Island

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.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

Color photography evokes emotion that can bring a viewer into the scene. It can transport one to faraway places or back into the past.

The first color photograph, taken in 1861, was more of an exercise in science than art. Photographer Thomas Sutton and physicist James Clerk Maxwell used three separate exposures of a tartan ribbon — filtered through red, green and blue — and composited them into a single image, resulting in the first multicolor representation of an object.

Before this innovation, photographs were often tinted by hand. By the 1890s, color photography processes were introduced based on that 1860s experiment. In the early 20th century, autochromes brought color photography to a commercial audience.

Now color photography is widely available, with these historic photographs documenting moments and scenes that are still vivid generations later. Photographers in the 20th and 21st centuries have offered new perspectives in the evolving field of modern color photography with gripping portraiture, snow-capped landscapes, stunning architecture and lots more.

In the voluminous collection of photography on 1stDibs, find vibrant full-color images by Slim Aarons, Helen Levitt, Gordon Parks, Stefanie Schneider, Steve McCurry and other artists. Bring visual interest to any corner of your home with color photography — introduce a salon-style gallery hang or another arrangement that best fits your space.