Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf – Photography course in Essen under Otto Steinert

Michael Wolf was born on 30 July 1954 in Munich, but spent much of his childhood in the USA and Canada as well as Germany. He held his first camera at the age of 14 - a gift from his parents that awakened in Michael Wolf a love of photography that would shape his entire life. After studying at the University of California in Berkeley, he returned to Germany to study photography under Otto Steinert at the Folkwang University of Fine Arts in Essen. The central theme of his photographic work, life in the big city, had already determined his final project for the Folkwang School: The young photographer caused quite a stir with his social reportage on the city of Bottrop in the Ruhr region. Following his studies, he worked as a freelance photojournalist in Germany.

Wolf appreciated the ‘unpredictable’ in China

Among other things, Michael Wolf worked for eight years for Stern magazine, and travelled to Hong Kong on their behalf in 1994. There he discovered his favourite city and, for a decade, a home. The artist explained his enthusiasm for Hong Kong and China as the great unpredictability that characterises the country, in his experience: Anything could happen at any time or place and offer the photographer a rewarding subject. Despite his fascination for the megacities, Michael Wolf did not paint an idealised picture, but rather pointed out the difficult consequences of urbanisation with impressive, cautionary images. For his series Tokyo Compression, he photographed passengers in the metro from 2010 to 2013 to document the undignified character of this overcrowded mass transport - much to the displeasure of many passengers, who were well aware of their situation and threatened the artist with their fists or tried to hide their faces. Michael Wolf himself also eventually found the confines of the densely populated city too oppressive and retreated to the Hong Kong island of Cheung Chau, where he lived until his death.

The synthesis of pictorial reportage and photo art

Over the course of his career, Michael Wolf published over 30 photo books; in his most famous work, Architecture of Density, he portrayed the façades of Hong Kong's skyscrapers, whilst his book Informal Solutions, however, also explored the back alleys of the Chinese metropolis, which otherwise go unnoticed by art and tourism. Although he gave up his profession in 2003 to devote himself to his own projects with a predominantly artistic focus, he never lost sight of his roots and saw his work as a fluid transition from photojournalism to fine art. The social criticism inherent in his work impressively reflected this philosophy. Michael Wolf received prizes and awards for his art, twice winning first prize at the prestigious World Press Photo Award (2005, 2010).

Michael Wolf died on 24 April 2019 in his apartment on the Hong Kong island of Cheung Chau.