Michael Wolf has been observing life in the cities and their architectural structures for more than 15 years which result in a unique work. In Hong Kong, he used to take pictures of the strikingly formalistic and severe buildings characterizing this megalopolis. The result of this – which can be seen in the series Architecture of Density is almost abstract.
Michael Wolf’s interest for the people living in such spaces and their relations to the city increased by chance when he enlarged a detail of the glass buildings he was then photographing in Chicago. The series Transparent City juxtaposes images from the buildings and pixellated details with blown-up details of the life within. Wolf’s curiosity about accidentally captured human situations led to work with the immense image archive of Google Street Views, made of « stolen » images. With great precision he isolated scenes from the streets of Paris. By framing and directing our gaze, Michael Wolf highlights the little habits of our urban lives with images capturing the humour, beauty and absurdity of daily life and raising the question of constant surveillance of public spaces. Intrusion was already the main subject of the series Tokyo Compression made in the Tokyo underground.
If the series Street View is partially taking place in France, however the French architecture was only indirectly evoked. Michael Wolf wanted to give his own vision of Paris since he has divided his time between Hong-Kong and Paris for the last ten years. But the unceasing and frustrating point was : how is it possible to take original pictures of Paris when it has been so much photographed and by so many great photographers? How is it possible to give a different vision of a city whose architecture has largely remained unchanged for more than a century?
Then came the idea of taking pictures of Parisian zinc roofs, that exist since Haussmann’s nineteenth century restructuring and which are so particular, they are one of the characteristic of Parisian architecture .
Michael Wolf captured the top of the Parisian buildings during Summer and Fall 2014 he visited dozens of high terraces and an astonishing series resulted from this, a series which tightly crops the local architecture and reveals dense patterns made of roofs, chimneys, buildings’ edges. But as always in Michael Wolf’s work, human presence is not so far : if you do observe carefully the details of some pictures then you can guess life interfering in the most abstract photos such as either a silhouette behind a curtain, or a worker repairing a gutter or lovers’ graffiti painted on a very high wall, very close to the sky.
Michael Wolf was born in 1954 in München, Germany. he has studied at Berkely University & at the Folkwang School in Essen. He lives in Paris & Hong Kong. His works are part of important museum collections : Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, California; Museum Folkwang, Essen,Museum for Architecture, Frankfurt, Monnaie de Paris…
EXHIBITION
Blind Walls – Paris RoofTops
Michael Wolf
From January 8th to March 1st, 2015
Galerie Particulière
11 & 16 rue du Perche
75003 Paris
from Tuesday to Saturday (11am-7pm)
www.lagalerieparticuliere.com
