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The Arts Intel Report

Spotlight on Michael Wolf

June 18 – July 25, 2020
529 W 20th St #3, New York, NY 10011, Hong Kong

The late German photographer Michael Wolf moved to Hong Kong in 1994, but when SARS broke out in 2002, “I bundled up wife and son and sent them back to Germany, and I stayed in Hong Kong and started working on Architecture of Density”—a photographic study of the megacity. Quitting editorial work so that he could devote himself to this study, Wolf became known for the way he captured the soul of Hong Kong, its enormity and sometimes daunting uniformity. “By eliminating sky and horizon you give the feeling of unlimited size,” he said in 2013, “because you have no idea how big the building is. . . . This illusion of unlimited size really conveys what we experience in megacities.” —E.C.

Michael Wolf, “Architecture of Density #99,” 2007 © The Estate of Michael Wolf. Courtesy of Flowers Gallery.