Day to night

There are some places around the world that exist as much as images as they do in concrete, stone, steel, or the rugged lay of the land. The Palio di Siena, the Kumbh Mela Festival in India, the Grand Canyon, the Campanile di San Marco in Venice, the Tulips of Amsterdam: these natural and man-made sites are fixed pictures in our collective consciousness, frozen in time and space as hallmarks of who and where we are.
Photographer Stephen Wilkes set out to rethink these iconic landmarks. Vast and extraordinarily detailed, his images capture not just the location, but rather a day in the life of that location. Wilkes’ process is intensive, waking before dawn and shooting up to 2,000 frames from a stationary vantage point, which are then painstakingly edited together to form a seamless collage. For every site, he also has to capture the same space without anyone in it. That empty image becomes, in Wilkes’ words, the “the naked plate” on which he overlays the details from all the other images.
With shifting light and shadows moving across the tableau, the final results are epic panoramas of life and earth in motion. Traffic hums, crowds come and go, clouds gather, the streetlights come on. Amid all the flux, intriguing vignettes of lives and societies emerge. Groups of tourists at Sacré Coeur pose for selfies, their backs turned to the building; a man is apprehended by police on Santa Monica Pier; and a woman in Coney Island goes out for an early morning walk along the beach. Stitching together thousands of successive snapshots, Wilkes also allows thousands of stories to co-exist in one image. The pictures become portraits not only of hailed and ancient landmarks, but also of group behaviour, the random incident, and the humble routine. The landmarks become our shared heritage not as frozen, immovable images, but as steadfast bastions of a living, evolving humanity.
Find out more over at Taschen today!

“CITY OF STARS” FROM ‘LA LA LAND’ NAMED AS MUSICNOTES 2017 SONG OF THE YEAR

Musicnotes, Inc., the market leader in digital sheet music, announced this month that award-winning songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul along with composer Justin Hurwitz are the recipients of the 2017 Musicnotes Song of the Year Award for their enchanting song “City of Stars” from the movie ‘La La Land’.
The Musicnotes Song of the Year Award is presented each year to the songwriter and publisher of the best-selling sheet music, and “City of Stars” became Musicnotes’ top-selling song in 2017.
“We’re excited about receiving this great Musicnotes honor, along with our wonderful collaborator, Justin Hurwitz!” stated the songwriting duo Pasek and Paul. “We’ve been partnered with Musicnotes since 2014, and knowing that ‘City of Stars’ was named as Song of the Year is incredibly meaningful.”
Shortly after “City of Stars” won the 2017 Golden Globe for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture, Benj and Justin gave an exclusive Musicnotes Song Spotlight interview featuring a behind-the-scenes story of how the song came to life.
Pasek revealed in the Song Spotlight interview that “City of Stars” is all about “wanting the city to embrace you” and wanting those who are looking for love to find what makes them truly happy.
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul join a star-studded list of Musicnotes winners, including Leonard Cohen (“Hallelujah”), Lukas Graham (“7 Years”), Vanessa Carlton (“A Thousand Miles”), Linda Perry (Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”), Evanescence (“My Immortal”), Marcus Hummon, Bobby Boyd and Jeff Hanna (“Bless the Broken Road”), and Adele (“Someone Like You”).
“They are incredibly gifted songwriters, and Musicnotes is honored to recognize them,” began Kathy Marsh, CEO of Musicnotes. “Their song ‘City of Stars’ will forever more be known as the Musicnotes best seller of 2017.”
For more Pasek and Paul arrangements, visit Musicnotes.com