Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf (30 July 1954 – 24 April 2019) was a German born artist and photographer who captured daily life in big cities. His work takes place primarily in Hong Kong and Paris and focuses on architectural patterns and structures, as well as the documentation of human life and interaction in the city. Wolf has published multiple photo books, has had his work exhibited widely around the world, has permanent collections across Germany and the United States, and has won three World Press Photo Awards from 2005 to 2011.

Early life Wolf was born in 1954 in Munich, Germany, and was raised in the United States, Europe, and Canada. He grew up in a family of artists; his father was a calligraphist and his mother worked with pottery and paint. He attended the North Toronto Collegiate Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976, he obtained a degree in visual communication at the University of Essen, Germany, where he studied with Otto Steinert.

Professional career Wolf began his career in 1994 as a photojournalist, spending eight years working in Hong Kong for the German magazine Stern. and he is quoted as saying that they were "stupid and boring." This led his career in a new direction as he strayed from photojournalism and instead began a career in fine-art photography in 2003, which is the work he is most credited for today. Wolf reports that the police detained him twice during the photographing of the series for "doing something which was harmful to the Chinese state." Photographs from the series were published in a 2002 book entitled Sitting in China.

The Real Toy Story In follow-up to the China: Factory of the World series, Wolf created an installation entitled The Real Toy Story. It consisted of 20,000 toys made in China and purchased in California attached with magnets to the walls of the gallery, along with photographs of workers making the toys. The photographs excluded the sky and the ground, thereby emphasizing the vertical lines of the buildings. The images have been compared with those of Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer. Tugo Cheng, an architect and fine artist from Hong Kong, described these images saying "He took a building that is very three-dimensional and compressed it into a surface in a way that would make one feel breathless and lost in scale."

The first book containing images from the series, Hong Kong: Front Door/ Back Door, was published in 2005. One review noted the book's "representation of an overpopulated city emptied of its human presence" and praised "the visual intelligence of Wolf's photographs." He used a wide-angle lens to show as much of the interiors of the rooms as possible. Each room was approximately in size, and he displayed photographs of 100 rooms, leading to the name "100x100." Each portrait consisted of a "copy artist" along with an example of a copied work. One reviewer wrote that the pictures "document intimate cultural and economic facets of globalization even as they record and complicate critical dilemmas about authenticity and the non-economic values of art." The series was collected in his book Real Fake Art published in 2011.

Transparent City A series shot in downtown Chicago beginning in 2006 that "combine impersonal cityscapes shot primarily at dusk or at night with details of the buildings’ inhabitants" became the basis for the 2008 book Transparent City. The photographs were taken from rooftops at dusk with a long lens. As in the Architecture of Density series, the exterior photographs excluded the horizon and the sky, leaving the windows of the buildings as the main subjects. In another interview, Wolf cited the artistic work of Edward Hopper as an inspiration for the series because of its voyeuristic nature and its inclusion of architectural details.

Articles about the book connected the photographs to the film Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. One reviewer described the book as "frightening," causing a feeling of "remoteness." The commuters' expressions were characterized in one review as "traumatised" and "woeful." Martin Parr selected the 2010 book as one of the 30 most influential photobooks published between 2001 and 2010.

Tokyo Compression was part of Metropolis, City Life in the Urban Age, the 2011 Noorderlicht Photofestival. One of Wolf's pictures was used for the poster, the cover of the catalogue and all media material of the exhibition.

Series using Google Street View In several series, such as Paris Street View, Manhattan Street View, and A Series of Unfortunate Events, Wolf took photographs of Google Street View scenes on his computer screen. Wolf compared his method of finding interesting scenes online to those of a street photographer walking around in a city.

The Street View photographs were characterized by pixelation and image noise which were compared with techniques used by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in their art.

Again, in his work Transparent City, he photographed buildings in downtown Chicago at dusk so that the inside of the windows were visible and the building's inhabitants were shown. This work created a discussion about privacy concerns, as people were being photographed unknowingly from inside their homes, although it gave a unique look into urban living with an emphasis on loneliness. 2003: Portraits of Chinese People, John Batten Gallery, Hong Kong 2006: Made in China, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (group exhibit including The Real Toy Story) 2006: The Real Toy Story, Museum of Work, Hamburg 2008–2009: Transparent City, Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco 2010: iseeyou, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York 2010: Life in Cities, m97 Gallery, Shanghai 2011: Tokyo Compression, Forum für Fotografie Köln 2012: Michael Wolf, Flowers Galleries, London, 25 November 2011 - 7 January 2012. 2012: Life in Cities, Christophe Guye Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland. 2016: International Photofestival 2017: Life in Cities – continued, Christophe Guye Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 2017: Life in Cities, Rencontres d'Arles festival, Arles, France (organized by The Hague Museum of Photography) 2018: Life in Cities, The Hague Museum of Photography 2018: Life in Cities, Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Collections Wolf's work is held in the following permanent collections: Brooklyn Museum, New York Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago

Publications Sitting in China. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. Hong Kong Front Door Back Door. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005. Min, Anchee, Duo Duo, and Stefan Landsberger. Chinese Propaganda Posters: From the Collection of Michael Wolf. Taschen's 25th anniversary special edition. Köln: Taschen, 2008. The Transparent City. New York: Aperture/ MoCP, 2008. Hong Kong Inside Outside. Berlin: Asia One/Peperoni, 2009. FY. Berlin: Wanderer Books/Peperoni, 2010. Tokyo Compression. Berlin: Asia One/Peperoni, 2010. Hong Kong corner houses. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. asoue (A Series of Unfortunate Events), 2nd edition. Berlin: Wanderer Books/Peperoni, 2011. Tokyo Compression Revisited. Berlin: Asia One/Peperoni, 2011. Real Fake Art. Berlin: Peperoni, 2011. . Tokyo Compression Three. Berlin: Peperoni, 2011. . Bottrop-Ebel 76. Peperoni, 2012. Hong Kong Trilogy. Berlin: Peperoni, 2013. . Hong Kong Flora. Berlin: Peperoni, 2014. . Edition of 400 copies. Informal Solution - Observations in Hong Kong Back Alley. Hong Kong: WE Press, 2016. . Tokyo Compression Final Cut. Berlin: Peperoni, 2017. . Cheung Chau Sunrises. Berlin: Buchkunst Berlin, 2019. . Hong Kong Lost Laundry. Berlin: Buchkunst Berlin, 2019. .

Awards 2005: First prize, Contemporary Issues category, World Press Photo competition for his photographs of workers in several types of factories for an article in Stern. 2010: World Press Photo competition, Daily life category, first prize. 2010: Transparent City was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet. 2011: World Press Photo competition, Contemporary Issues, honorable mention.