Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf, from the series Real Fake Art

"If you look at all my projects, the umbrella for them is life in cities. Many different aspects of city life. Megacities."

So said the photographer Michael Wolf, who died in his sleep, apparently unexpectedly, two days ago, at the relatively young age of 64.

He was born in Munich, Germany, raised mostly in the USA and Canada, worked early in his career as a photojournalist for Stern magazine in Germany, and lived most of his adult life in Asia—since 1994 in Hong Kong, where he became one of a line of great photographers of that unique "city-state" in Southeastern China. HK is a shipping hub and financial center, mostly urban, highly cosmopolitan in flavor, and among the top handful of the most densely-populated places on Earth.

Michael Wolf, Bastard Chairs (multiple)

Michael Wolf's work included many series based around ideas, mostly having to do with details. He made street portraits but also photographed city dwellers unawares through uncurtained windows. He was greatly concerned with pattern and repetition, and often showed the same pictures as single works and as part of multiples made of anything from two images to many dozens. One of his series concentrated on lost laundry; one of his multiples was of ancient, patched bicycle seats. His exhibits often looked partly like art installations as much as photography shows. He is perhaps best known for "Tokyo Compression," a series of photographs of faces jammed up against the windows or glass doors of subway cars.

His website is still up. Although difficult to experience as tiny JPEGs, you can get a taste of his preoccupations and concerns from the work there. There is a cursory obituary at the New York Times and a more complete one at Petapixel.

Mike
(Thanks to Kenneth Tanaka, Nico Maijer and others)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(Not) everything must fade away

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

David Comdico: There are a couple of videos linked from the Wolf website that are very good. In one of the videos he praises the work of Tim Hetherington (his sleeping soldiers series) and Tim's ability to use his creative talent to say something new about a subject we thought we already understood. The same can be said of Wolf. Wolf had a real talent for visualizing ideas. Some of his strategies have become very common in contemporary photography but few have executed as well as he did."

Michael Matthews: "Wolf’s 'Paris Roof Tops' series remains an all-time favorite. If I had an art budget one of those would top the list."

Edwin: "I read the news in a local paper and didn't realise until then that he lived right there among us! I always thought that he lived in Germany and was amazed at the way he looked at Hong Kong, and now I have the answer.

"It's interesting to see Mike, who lives in the US of A the entire time, write about Hong Kong, my home city. Hong Kong is not a 'city-state,' it's a special administrative region, a far cry from a 'state.' 'Shipping hub,' fast disappearing. 'Entirely urban,' not really! Out of the 1,000 sq. km total area, there's 445 sq. km designated as country parks with no residences of any sort, and then some non-designated rural areas. Maybe that's the reason it's one of the most densely populated area on earth."

Mike replies: Okay, I stand corrected. Thanks. I changed "entirely" to "mostly" and put "city-state" is scare quotes. I often have to research very quickly, and the reference I found said that HK is 79% urban and 21% rural. Given that all the urban land in the USA could fit in the Northeast corner of it, I thought that was relatively a lot.

I've never been anywhere near Hong Kong, and, alas, never will be.

Thomas Rink: "If you have a sweet spot for black and white documentary photography, have a look at his master thesis. According to his biography, he studied with Otto Steinert at the Folkwang university in my hometown, Essen, Germany. For his thesis, he had apparently chosen to document the working-class life in this region of Germany (Ruhrgebiet), and photographed in a coal miner's housing estate in a neighbour town of Essen, Bottrop. His pictures are an interesting account of a bygone era, as all local coal mines have closed shop.

"In 1981, Michael Wolf founded the group 'Antrazit' together with Marc Izikowitz and Wolfgang Staiger. Some of the pictures from Michael Wolf's thesis are featured in the book Maloche—Leben im Revier, published by Antrazit. It is out of print, but still available secondhand at reasonable prices. Unfortunately, the book is in German, so most of the audience here will miss the excellent essay by Max von der Grün—but the pictures are impressive!"

Mark Roberts: "The Guardian's obituary."

William Furniss: "I knew Michael Wolf pretty well. We both arrived in Hong Kong around the same time and worked as photographers, and our paths would cross. I can say 'pretty well' because he was a man with a solid carapace, honest opinions with straightforward Germanic delivery, and he could be a little intimidating. First of all he seemed serious, and so certain were his earlier projects (so many completed projects!)—as a fellow photographer one approached him with a lot of respect. But he was competitive enough to make you feel as if you were somehow possibly in his league and that meant the game was on. It actually turned out he had a splendid sense of humour and was a fun and naughty person to be around. I think recently that whimsical side was coming to the fore in his work as his early successes, particularly with Architecture of Density, and subsequent shows at places like Arles meant his cultural contribution was fully recognised. The old imitation adage applied to him more than anyone else I know—he must have felt extremely 'flattered.' One of his self proclaimed secrets was that he was 'two steps ahead of the curve'— see his body of work here and you will see what I mean.

"Sixty-four in this age is far too young and we have been robbed of who knows how much? The fact that his last project was a series of sunsets taken from his home on Cheung Chau feels too ironic to be anything but masterful."

Comments

[Mike Ferron]

"So said the photographer Michael Wolf, who died in his sleep, apparently unexpectedly, two days ago, at the relatively young age of 64."

First my condolences to his family, friends and loved ones.

See this is why I took my social security at age 63! Maybe enjoy a few years not working so hard and get my cameras out more.

[V.i. Voltz]

>entirely urban

I guess you’ve never been there. The New Territories are large and quite wild. In northern Sai Kung I was once attacked by a troupe of monkeys while on a hike, alone, far enough from whywhere that I feared I might be killed and never found. One of my neighbours on one of the small islands had their dog eaten by a wild reticulated python. Hong Kong is far from entirely urbanised, away from Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

The best obituary is at Hong Kong Free Press: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/04/26/extraordinary-eye-michael-wolf-famed-photographer-shot-hong-kongs-architecture-density-dies-aged-65

Voltz

[c.d.embrey]

I checked-out his site. There are several nice shots of people, using the universal bird, to indicate that they thought the photographer was numero uno 8-)

The through-the-window voyeur-shots show me something I hadn't seen before. The artful-out-of-focus stuff is A-OK—he'd get no likes on Ad-Am fora.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Michael Wolf’s video from a recent Paris Photo serves as lovely reminder of his thoughts and works.

On a personal note, some time ago I was going to meet Mr. Wolf at a social function, having been told that we seemed to be rather kindred spirits (and nearly the same age). Unfortunately I was ultimately unable to attend, something I’ve long regretted, especially now.

[Greg Heins]

Michael Wolf was definitely the Real Deal. I have the opportunity a couple of times a year to see a large print of his and it is always a distinct pleasure. Remarkable work.

[robert quiet photographer]

I visited one exhibition of his work a few month ago in Italy. Great work, specially when seen in the real dimensions. RIP
robert