Stephen Wilkes: Flatiron NYC Day To Night – 1036 Piece Puzzle

Photographer Stephen Wilkes is one of America’s most iconic photographers, widely recognized for his fine art, editorial and commercial work. 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 the course of a full day. A select group of these images are then seamlessly blended into one photograph, capturing the changing of time within a single frame.

“The Flatiron building has been called ‘one of the world’. It’s the most iconic skyscrapers. It has always been one of my favorite buildings. I love the compositional divide the building creates in this photograph. Like the bow of a great ship, the Flatiron mirrors itself, each side shares a different avenue of the city. To make this image, I photographed from a 170-foot crane floating directly over 5th Ave. Broadway is seen as ‘day’, and 5th avenue, is photographed at ‘night’. This photograph was created on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2010. As twilight came over the city, the 9/11 memorial lights began to rise at the end of Fifth Avenue. It’s an image about hope and memory. New Yorkers continue to move forward, yet never forget.”