On April 25, 2019, German photographer Michael Wolf passed away suddenly in his Cheung Chau home at the age of 65.
Based in Hong Kong since 1994, he was perhaps best known for his shots of urban landscapes and the lifestyles of the city's inhabitants. His 2009 book, Architecture Of Density, focused on Hong Kong's dizzying skyscrapers, evoking both claustrophobia and a sense of overwhelming mass through capturing the sides of buildings and their repetitive - albeit colourful - architectural styles.
He also possessed a fascination with the minutiae of daily city life, dedicating series of photographs to the Earth God shrines that grace shops and homes (Big City, Small Gods) and even the unexpected personal bric-a-brac found in Hong Kong's back alleys (Informal Solutions - Observations in Back Alleys). He shot other cities around the world, too, documenting the chimneys of Paris (Paris Roof Tops) and the crowded trains of Tokyo (Tokyo Compression).
While his success was in fine art photography, however, he originally made his start as a photojournalist, shooting for the likes of German magazines Stern and Geo, before becoming an independent photographer in 2003.
His works feature in permanent collections of museums across the globe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He won first prize in the World Press Photo competition in 2005 and 2010, in addition to being nominated for a number of other awards.
Most recently, he launched his Cheung Chau Sunrises series of photographs that, as the title suggests, depicts various sunrises in his island home.
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