CHELSEA — Imagine seeing an entire day in one photograph.
That’s what photographer Stephen Wilkes creates. He chooses a location — something famous like the Flatiron building or Times Square. Then he rents a cherry picker and spends 10 to 15 hours in its raised basket, shooting.
“I choose very iconic subject matter,” said Wilkes, a documentary and commercial photographer. “But I want you to look at it in a completely different way.”
Wilkes, 53, unveiled the first exhibition of his “Day to Night” series last week at the ClampArt Gallery on West 25th Street near 10th Avenue in Chelsea. On Tuesday night, Wilkes attended a reception at the gallery and spoke about the process and meaning behind his work.
Wilkes rarely takes breaks on those days when he’s shooting. He’s too scared he might miss a moment. So he photographs constantly, taking roughly 1,000 pictures throughout the course of the day.
“You just put yourself out there, and you wait for something to happen,” Wilkes said. “I just want to live in the moment. I just want to react to what I’m seeing.”
Wilkes then narrows the selection of photographs down to about 25 or 50 images and begins the process of digitally blending them together so that both day and night — and all the corresponding happenings — are represented in one image.
“The concept is to change time in a single photo,” said Wilkes, who lived in Greenwich Village for years before moving to Westport, Conn.
The exhibit includes still images of Times Square, the Flatiron building, Gramercy Park, Coney Island, Park Avenue, Washington Square Park, the High Line and Central Park. Each image took up to a month to create, after the initial photographing was done, Wilkes said.
“I’m interested in capturing all sides of the city,” said Wilkes, who is currently working on projects that will center on more seasonal themes like fall foliage and Christmas.
The first photograph he created for the “Day to Night” series was one featuring the High Line in 2009. It was an assignment for a magazine, Wilkes said. The park fascinated him equally during the day and at night, so he approached the editor and suggested capturing both in one image.
The editor agreed, and Wilkes got to work on the first photograph.
“Once I executed this picture, I knew that it could be done,” Wilkes said.
The process of completing a single image is rigorous, Wilkes said, from the hours of shooting to the weeks of production. There are also snags that pop up along the way that make for interesting experiences.
Times Square was perhaps the most difficult place to shoot logistically. But on the day that he photographed the teeming tourist destination, there was also a bomb scare. The police cleared everyone from the streets in three minutes, Wilkes said.
“It was really, really crazy to bear witness to that,” he added.
When he photographed the Flatiron building last year on Sept. 11, 2010, he was set up near Madison Square Park when that too had some sort of bomb scare, he recalled.
Police evacuated the park, and even deployed a bomb specialist decked out in protective gear.
“We got really uneasy,” said Wilkes, who was with an assistant at the time. “[And] Mr. Hurt Locker shows up, and he is literally 30 yards from our cherry picker,” he said, referring to the Oscar-award-winning 2009 film about a bomb squad assigned to defuse roadside devices in Iraq.
“[The locations] all have different challenges,” he added. “But it’s all part of what we live with every day, really.”
The tiny ClampArt gallery was nearly filled Tuesday night, and visitors peppered Wilkes with questions about his methodology and his vision.
“I’m actually blown away by [the photographs],” said Daye Simpson, a photographer who attended the exhibit on Tuesday night. “He’s expansive, but he’s also got depth of field, and he’s incredibly detail-oriented.”
Wilkes said he has been overwhelmed by such positive responses since he launched the exhibit. Traffic on his website shot up 3,000 percent in a week, and he has received emails from around the world praising his work.
“It touched a chord, something about time and the concept of what I’m doing,” Wilkes said. “It’s also a study of the way we interact and the way we live.”
Stephen Wilkes’ “Day to Night” is scheduled to run through Oct. 29. The ClampArt Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
