Michael Wolf was born in Munich, Germany, in 1954 and grew up in the United States. He studied at the University of California Berkley and at the Folkwang School in Essen (Germany) with renowned photography master Otto Steinert. He has lived in Hong Kong since 1994 and has worked extensively across China. His photographs explore the complex cultural identity of China, from commercial elements of this new global economy to the social and economic implications of the urban density in the city of Hong Kong.
In 2004 Wolf gained international recognition as a world-class art photographer with “Architecture of Density,” his highly acclaimed series of large-scale photographs of Hong Kong residential buildings. He has won the first prize in the World Press Photo Award Competition in 2005 and 2010 and an honorable mention in 2011. In 2010, Wolf was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet Photography Prize. Wolf’s photographs are held in numerous important permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Brooklyn Museum, The San Jose Museum of Art, California; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Museum Folkwang, Essen and the German Museum for Architecture, Frankfurt.
He has published more than 13 photo books including “Small Gods Big City” (2012), “Bottrop Ebel 1976” (2012), “Tokyo Compression Three” (2012), “Architecture of Density” (2012), ”Hong Kong Corner Houses” (2011), “Portraits” (2011), “Tokyo Compression Revisited” (2011), “Real Fake Art” (2011), “FY” (2010), “A Series of Unfortunate Events” (2010), “Tokyo Compression” (2010) “Hong Kong Inside/Outside”(2009), “The Transparent City” (2008), “Hong Kong: Front Door/Back Door” (2005) and “Sitting in China” (2002).
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