A PHOTOGRAPHER WITH AN UNPRECEDENTED BODY OF WORK

A collaboration between the Office of the President and the Fairfield University Art Museum will bring photographer Stephen Wilkes’ large-scale work “Easter Mass, Vatican City, Rome, Italy, Day to Night” to the Barone Campus Center beginning Wednesday, Feb. 21.

Since opening his studio in New York City in 1983, Wilkes, a National Geographic explorer, has built a body of work and established a reputation as one of America’s most iconic photographers. He is widely recognized for his fine art, editorial and commercial photography. 

Commenting on the installation, Philip I. Eliasoph, Ph.D., professor of art history and visual culture and special assistant to the president for arts and culture, said, “Anticipating the pleasure — and jaw-dropping wonder — of viewing a jumbo-scaled photograph by Stephen Wilkes, Fairfield University will be enriched and enchanted with the artist’s audaciously scaled format. With time, patience and meticulous accuracy, Wilkes transforms the cutting edge of photography into a journey through Einstein’s time and space continuum.”

“My work is about visual storytelling. The Vatican was something that I had worked on getting permission to photograph for many years — I wanted to capture Easter Mass, as I was trying to tell the story of religion around the world using my “Day to Night” technique. There is an extraordinary energy around the pontiff, especially during Easter,”   said Wilkes.

The yearslong challenge to receive permission to create a “Day to Night” photograph of Easter Mass at the Vatican was resolved when a Vatican priest contacted Wilkes and connected him with the Instituto Maria S.S. Bambina. The location — with a terrace overlooking St. Peter’s Square and Basilica — was perfect. Wilkes photographed a total of 1,575 individual images and then edited approximately 50 photographs for the final “Easter Mass” photograph. Pope Francis appears 10 times within the work.

“Day to Night” has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning as well as in dozens of other prominent media outlets.

“I hope that students and passersby are invited into the work and that they have a visceral experience,” said Wilkes, a longtime Westport, Connecticut, resident. “The closer you look, the more you see, the more stories are within the picture. …

Fairfield University is the modern Jesuit University, rooted in one of the world’s oldest intellectual and spiritual traditions. More than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students from 36 states, 47 foreign countries, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are enrolled in the university’s five schools. In the spirit of rigorous and sympathetic inquiry into all dimensions of human experience, Fairfield welcomes students from diverse backgrounds to share ideas and engage in open conversations. The university is located in the heart of a region where the future takes shape, on a stunning campus on the Connecticut coast just an hour from New York City.