Artlog

Interview with Stephen Wilkes

Stephen Wilkes work has graced the covers of Time, Life Magazine, New York Times Magazine. He’s been exhibited in numerous galleries. In 1998 Stephen began photographing the south side of Ellis Island. He helped to raise six million dollars towards the renovation and stabilization, and in 2006 W.W. Norton and published the book Ellis Island Ghosts of Freedom. In 2000 Stephen traveled across the US for 52 days documenting the millennium. The most recent project took him to China, where he examined the intersection of the rural and industrial setting and the monumental development around the Beijing Olympics.

How did you decide to become a photographer, and when did photography become your career?

Wilkes: I was always drawn to science. When I was twelve years old, I read about a small class in a public school called “Scientific Photography.” I was fascinated by the fact that they were showing people how to take pictures through a microscope, so I signed up. I’m an identical twin, and my brother is a terrific painter. I could see things, but I never had the artistic ability to draw the way he could. So for me, when I got a camera in my hand I could apply the things I was seeing and feeling and capture them instantly. I trained with a wedding photographer in Jamaica Queens at the age of 13. By fifteen, I was on my own doing weddings, portraits, special events, and that’s how it all began.

You started as a commercial photographer, but you have successfully bridged being a commercial and fine art photographer. What are some of the challenges of working as both?

Wilkes: When I was learning the craft I was drawn to the idea that I could capture something the way I saw it. Then I entered the world of commercial photography. Developing a commercial discipline early made me realize that I had to master the craft before I could really execute my vision. The photographer Bob Adelman taught me one of the most valuable lessons when I was seventeen. He said “Listen kid, make sure you get yourself a solid education, learn what the world’s about because if you don’t understand the world and all it’s complexities, your photographs won’t speak to people.” I realized that I needed to be broader. At the end of the conversation he said “Make sure you get a good business education too because most photographers are lousy businessmen.” That’s what drew me to Syracuse where I double majored in business marketing and communications.

Why did you decide to take on Ellis Island as a project in 1999?

Wilkes: Former art director of Life Magazine, Bob Ciano called me out of the blue and basically said “I’ve got this editorial assignment, and we need some pictures of the south side of Ellis Island, but they’re only going to give you an hour so see what you can do.” This one editorial assignment became a five year impassioned project. Those years were spent studying this island through every season. I was open enough to recognize in my photographs that there was something else going on emotionally, that I had never experienced before. The emotions, gestures and body language I could read in people as a photojournalist, actually transcended these physical spaces in Ellis Island. I wanted the subtext of the palpable sense of humanity that I felt in these rooms, and wanted all my work to attain this level. After approximately four years, the stabilization started and removed all the detriment, ruins and broken windows and invading plant life. I realized that what I was documenting was going to be lost forever, and felt blessed to have been a part of it.

Is there a photo or two that you return to now that sticks out for you, one that holds a special place?

Wilkes:The cover photograph of my book is the first of a group of photographs that had a certain magic to it. It looks down corridor number nine, the spinal chord of the hospital, to the end window. I’d never seen light so strange before and haven’t since that night. Everything on the dark side was light and airy, yet dead. The left side was in shadow and darkness, yet living. It became the most important piece of the collection, symbolizing what happened in this hospital and on this island, an experience of either life or death. The other image that resonates is one which captures a shaft of light coming through a ghostly faded window, illuminating sprouting plants between planks of oak wood, giving life again to a place that had been dead.

Ellis Island represents the opening of the doors to America and to the world. In many ways, I think the Olympics in Beijing are also a kind of symbolic opening to what has happened at the turn of this century in China. What brought you to China?

Wilkes: In ‘78 I documented a trip to China with the School of Visual and Performing Arts of Syracuse. I kept hearing about the changes going on in China during the 27 years of my career, and decided that I had to go back to see as a visual reference what had changed after the death of Mao. The current Olympics have opened a lot of eyes. The Chinese are trying to find a balance within this extraordinary growth that they’re going through, a balance which will be critical to their continued growth and success, and that’s what I’m interested in capturing. I want you to see all the things that I’m seeing, because I think China is going to be the story for the next 25 years.

How did you feel watching the Olympics, looking at the controversy with the opening ceremonies and the digital remastery and the images that are now broadcast in a world that might not have been paying attention in China, and the actual reality that you’ve seen and that your images show?

Wilkes: Well I think NBC did an incredible job on the coverage. This was a defining moment for this country, something way beyond the Olympics. If you look back in history, China and India were the leaders. So this was a way for China to say “we are ready to retake our rightful place in terms of being the economic power and leader.” That being said, I think they were very conscious to not spoil the opening. It is so unbelievable that they were able to put these games together in the way that they did especially after an earthquake of 7.9 left five million homeless. I would, however, have liked to see a little more balance in terms of the other issues going on in China. Especially looking at the Today Show, I watched so many episodes of people eating different Chinese cuisine, I felt like, where are all the other stories?

It seems like the environmental coverage was so focused on smog when there were so many other stories that could have addressed

Wilkes: I think a break through for China and the world that people are not talking about, is China’s ability to reverse some of the effects from the prolonged pollution that they’ve had in Beijing. My hope now is that they won’t want to just start up all the factories again and make it be business as usual. It has to be a permanent change. A question that people now have is how will the Chinese change and adapt after the success of these games?

Do you think there’s going to be a slow down following this tremendous growth in the past eight years, or as your photograph of the Egg with the shanty town in the foreground suggests, will this growth continue to spread?

Wilkes: The growth was so out of control that a lot has been permanently lost. As to what is left, there is almost a reversal process taking place in Shanghai. Hutongs have become almost like a high society pied-a-terre. A lot of wealthy Chinese are now buying Hutongs and renovating them, making them into little beautiful state of the art apartments, which is so contradictory to what their original purpose was. Originally places to share and exchange, and therefore minimize your living cost, the Hutongs now house wealthy Chinese that are spending lots of money just to say they have one. If that’s the way they have to be preserved, then let it be. This growth is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. I’ve been back four times this year, and the Chinese have built super highways in a month. The world’s greatest architects are creating structures that are visually extraordinary. It is reminiscent of the 1930’s boom in NYC with the Chrysler building, the Empire state building, Grand Central station.

Do you see any parallels between your US tour at the height of the tech and internet boom in 1999-2000 and this pinnacle of the Olympics, in terms of the mood and atmosphere, and this sense of ‘the sky is the limit’? Looking at what has happened in the last eight years in this country versus what has happened in China, do you think there’s a potential for there to be a temporary lag here?

Wilkes: Unfortunately, our focus has been on fighting multiple wars and not on our internal problems. The Chinese have been focused on one thing, and that is the seven years that they put towards the Olympics. They have been rebuilding the infrastructure, building 200 universities, hiring the greatest minds to teach, opening the internet. Everybody is completely dialed in, there’s a sense that everybody is working towards the idea of a collective, but you can also see the individual goals. The great challenge is how the peasants, comprising two thirds of the population, are going to be able to grow with the economy. It is difficult to bring education to those remote areas, and as the labor force grows the peasants are going to want more. That is part of my fascination, the causes and effects, where this is all going.

It’s clear that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of your work coming out of China. Is there anything in particular that we should look out for in the coming year?

Wilkes: I did a piece for Vanity Fair’s August issue where I photographed some of the great new architecture in Beijing. I shot the construction process of the Beijing National Stadium, Bird’s Nest, as well as the CCTV Tower, and the Beijing Looped Hybrid by Stephen Holl. Over the next two years, I am going to try to publish all of this in a book which will hopefully tell a very dynamic story about China. When you work on a project for so long, time distills the idea, the concepts. The purity of what you’re saying comes through. That is what I am trying to do with China, I am trying to show all aspects of it, and that is what will be presented in the essays and contents of the book.