Stephen Wilkes’s ‘Day to Night’ Photos Are Now Available as a Jigsaw
Stephen Wilkes is best known for his large-scale, highly detailed images that capture the passage of time from day to night in a single frame and now they are available in jigsaw format.
Puzzles and games company Galison has partnered with Wilkes for Day to Night ™ which features “epic cityscapes and landscapes, portrayed from a fixed camera angle for up to 30 hours, capturing fleeting moments of humanity as light passes in front of Wilkes’ lens.” Wilkes’s images can take months to complete.
Four puzzles are available that are all connected to New York City including Coney Island Beach, the Flatiron Building, and Washington Square Park.
“It is an honor for us at Galison to work with Stephen Wilkes,” says Bill Miller, President of Galison Publishing. “Our mission is to bring art to everyday life and Stephen’s work encompasses both original technique and an array of subjects that reflect our shared interests in the world.”
In an interview with PetaPixel last year, Wilkes revealed he spends anywhere from 24 to 36 hours on location for his Day to Night photo shoots. Therefore, the morning a viewer may see as the start of an image may actually come a full day after the night perceived as bookending the work.
“People always ask me, ‘How do you stay up for 36 hours? I can’t watch TV 36 hours.’ Well, it’s easy because I’m afraid of missing something. I don’t want to miss a moment,” Wilkes said of his work.
When planning his day-to-night photos, Wilkes must consider not only the moon phase, but where the light orientation would be and also if during the 24 hours he would stay in position there would be any people there.
In a famous photo of a watering hole in the Serengeti, Wilkes shot it for over 26 hours showing the different animals that visited it over that period. He shoots an average of 1,500 photos — about 20 gigabytes of storage — for each of his Day to Night pieces. He then selects choice frames and spends many weeks editing the interesting areas together to show the passage of time in a single composite photo.
