Michael Wolf was born in 1954 in Munich, Germany and was raised in the United States, Europe, and Canada. 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.

Wolf began his career in 1994 as a photojournalist, spending eight years working in Hong Kong for the German magazine Stern.

Wolf states 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.

Wolf’s current works are spread between Hong Kong and Paris mainly and
his work focuses on the structure and repetitiveness of daily life in big cities. He has has many notable projects such as ‘100×100’, ‘Bastard Chairs’ and ‘Tokyo Compression’.