Michael WOLF (1954 – 2019, Germany)
Architecture of Density #111, 2008
C–print
Sheet 121.9 x 152.4 cm (48 x 60 in.)
Edition of 9, plus 2 AP; Ed. no. 5/9
Print only
– Michael Wolf
Michael Wolf was born in 1954 in Munich, Germany. He worked and lived in Paris and Hong Kong where he died in April 2019. The focus of Michael Wolf’s work is life in mega-cities. His projects document both the architecture and the vernacular culture of metropolises. Born in Munich, Wolf grew up in Canada, Europe, and the United States, studying at UC Berkeley and at the Folkwang School with Otto Steinert in Essen, Germany. He moved to Hong Kong in 1994, where he worked for eight years as a contract photographer for Stern magazine. Since 2003, Wolf has been focusing on his own projects, publishing over thirty books of his work.
His work is held in many permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art in California, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, and M+ in Hong Kong.
– Architecture of Density
Stunning and sobering, the photographs of high-rise apartment buildings in Hong Kong by German photographer Michael Wolf reveal his personal fascination with life in mega-cities. Having lived there for several years, Wolf began to document Hong Kong’s extreme development and complex urban dynamics, and how these factors play into the relationships between public and private space, anonymity and individuality, in one of the most densely populated cities on the planet. His close-up view takes the repetitive facades and colourful palettes out of their architectural context, instead offering urban patterns. With an introduction by Ernest Chui and essay by Natasha Egan.
– Michael Wolf, Art, City, Street Photography, Colour Photography, Cityscape, Skyscraper, Building, Architecture, Geometry, Structure, Abstract, Rooftops, Asia