Flamingos, Lake Bogoria, Kenya, Day to Night, 2017-2024
Infused dyes sublimated on aluminum
48 x 90 in.
Donated by artist
On Display
507 NoHo Breakout Area
About the Artwork
“To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle” – Walt Whitman
Day to Night is a 10 year personal journey to capture fundamental elements of our world, through the hourglass of a single day. It’s a synthesis of art & science, exploring time, memory & history through the internal & external circadian rhythms of our daily lives. I photograph from locations and views that are part of our collective memory. Working from a fixed camera angle, I capture what I see, the fleeting moments of humanity and light as time passes. After photographing as many as 1500 single images, I select the best moments of the day and night. Using time as my guide, all of these moments are then seamlessly blended into a single photograph, visualizing our conscious journey with time. In a world where humanity has become obsessively connected to personal devices, the ability to look is becoming an endangered human experience. Photographing a single place for up to 36 hours becomes a meditation, it has informed me in a unique way, inspiring deep insights into the narrative story of life, and the fragile interaction of humanity within our natural world.
Interview with the Artist
Artist Biography
Since opening his photography studio in New York City in 1983, Stephen Wilkes has built an unprecedented body of work and a reputation as one of America’s most innovative photographers, widely recognized for his fine art, editorial, and commercial work. Wilkes’ 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 five years, and the Goldring Arts Journalism Board. Stephen Wilkes is a uniquely creative artist in contemporary photography. By utilizing the digital resources available today, he has developed a process that has expanded photography’s preconceived notions of a fourth dimension of time and space.
About the Art Program
In January 2024, the Child Mind Institute moved its headquarters to a new 82,000-square-foot space in Midtown Manhattan. From the beginning, our new home was envisioned not only as a place for clinical care and research, but as a space that feels comforting, human, and inviting for children, teens, and their families. In order to support this vision, CMI established a comprehensive Art Program to foster meaningful engagement between our patients and the artwork around them. Through a thoughtfully curated permanent collection and integrated installations, the program helps create an environment that is stimulating, flexible, and collaborative —a space where we will help tens of thousands of children from 49 states, Washington, DC, and 45 nations over the coming decades and inspire current and future scientists to change the child mental health field as we know it. We hope that the digital archive will give patients and their families further opportunity to explore the collection and learn more about the talented artists that have contributed to our space.