Wolf was born in 1954 in Munich, Germany, and was raised in the United States, Europe, and Canada. He lived and worked in Hong Kong and Paris. 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. Wolf died in April 2019 in Cheung Chau, Hong Kong.

Wolf began his career in 1994 as a photojournalist, spending eight years working in Hong Kong for the German magazine Stern. He said that a decline in the magazine industry led to photojournalism assignments becoming “stupid and boring.” In 2003 he decided to work only on fine-art photography projects. In ‘Tokyo compression’ Wolf photographed people squashed up against windows in the underground trains. Michael Wolf’s Tokyo compression focuses on the craziness of Tokyo’s underground system. For his shots he has chosen a location which relentlessly provides his camera with new pictures minute by minute. Every day thousands and thousands of people enter this subsurface hell for two or more hours, constrained between glass, steel and other people who roll to their place of work and back home beneath the city. In Michael Wolf’s pictures we look into countless human faces, all trying to sustain this evident madness in their own way.

I like this image the most as it tell you about the subject. From this image I can gather that the Tokyo sub-way is a dirty place and also that the people who live there must wake early to go to work through a crazy rush-hour of people to support family, and that they are probably very tired constantly and grab sleep when they can. This image is also compels you to look at the subject as he is put in the frame due to the trains window he is squashed up against. Many of the other images also show people squashed up against the wet windows, also suggesting it is hot and crowded in there.

This image is quite dark and more of an environmental photo rather than his usual pop-art or abstract photos. The photo would have been taken with a higher ISO to let more light into the lens in the darkly lit scenes of the tube. A fast shutter speed would have been needed if the train was moving, or a low one of roughly 1/60 of a second if it had stopped.

Architecture of Density

In Wolf’s ‘Architecture of Density’ he has used natural light from the city of Hong Kong to catch the repetitive and colourful high-riser apartment block. Natural lighting has been able to capture the natural tonal ranges of the building which I think depicts the city of Hong Kong well. A deep depth of field would have been used this is because all parts of the photograph are in focus. A shutter speed of 1/60 would have been use as it is the usually one for people and slow moving object an ISO of about 100. this has lead to a visually appealing image.