Stephen Wilkes and Jonas Bendiksen

For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art and editorial photography. His photographs have been exhibited in both galleries and museums and featured in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, TIME, Sports Illustrated, London Sunday Times, and Condé Nast Traveler. In 1999, Wilkes completed a personal project photographing the south side of Ellis Island. Through his photographs and video work, Wilkes helped secure $6 million in funding towards the restoration for the south side of the island and his monograph, Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom (W.W. Norton) published in 2006 received critical acclaim including TIME’s 5 Best Photography Books of The Year, 2006. Wilkes’ awards and honors include the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography, Photographer of the Year from Adweek Magazine, Fine Art Photographer of the Year 2004 Lucie Award, Adobe Breakthrough Award and the Epson Creativity Award. Wilkes’ work is in the permanent collection of the James A. Michener Art Museum, Snite Museum of Art, International Museum of Photography: George Eastman House, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Dow Jones Collection, Griffin Museum of Photography, Jewish Museum of New York, Library of Congress, The Historic New Orleans Collection and numerous private collections. Wilkes is represented by Peter Fetterman Gallery, Los Angeles, and The Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM. Wilkes’ newest body of work is titled “Day to Night,” embodying the epic cityscapes of New York with fleeting moments throughout the day to night Wilkes photographs from one camera angle continuously for approximately 15 hours.

Norway-born Jonas Bendiksen is known for his focus on isolated communities and enclaves. Bendiksen began his career at the age of 19 as an intern at Magnum’s London office, before leaving for Russia to pursue his own work as a photojournalist where he photographed stories from the fringes of the former Soviet Union, a project that was published as the book Satellites (2006). In 2005, with a grant from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, he started working on The Places We Live, a project on the growth of urban slums across the world, which combines still photography, projections and voice recordings to create
three-dimensional installations. His work has appeared in publications such as National Geographic, Geo, Newsweek, The Independent, The Sunday Times Magazine, and The Telegraph Magazine among others. Bendiksen’s work has been featured in two monographs published by the Aperture Foundation and has been exhibited in museums including the Smithsonian Institution’s Natural History Museum and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., and the National Media Museum in the UK. Bendiksen has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2003 Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, New York, and second place in the Daily Life Stories for World Press Photo, as well as first prize in the Pictures of the Year International Awards. His documentation of life in a Nairobi slum, Kibera, published in the Paris Review, won a National Magazine Award in 2007.