Tag: Michael Wolf

The megacities in China captured by German photographer Michael Wolf are “as surreal as they are kinda terrifying,” states Tom Hawking. Wolf describes his project in an interview with Vice:

First off, what’s a megacity?

Cities that have a population with more than 5 million. I wouldn’t really consider any European city a megacity. Paris has a population of 2 million, whereas in China, for instance, a city with 3 million is considered small. I’m talking about populations of 5, 10, 20 million—up to 25 million.

Why do they look so depressing in your photos?

Well, some things about megacities have a lot of downsides. These are profit centers. The people who run them are not really concerned about the populations that live in them. They are concerned about making money. So on the one hand they are very intimidating and frightening but on the other hand they are extremely beautiful. In The Architecture of Density (his photo series featuring an extremely dense Hong Kong high-rise), you can almost see them as a tapestry.

How he describes the message of his work:

I’ve always been a social liberal. I’ve always been for the underclass. For example, I did a project called 100×100 where I photographed 100 apartments in a Hong Kong building that was about to be demolished, all measuring ten feet by ten feet. I am showing the living conditions of the city—but again, I’m looking at the vitality and resourcefulness of the people. They are everyday human beings and that’s what I am trying to document.

Previous Dish on Wolf’s work here.

Michael Zhang is wowed by Michael Wolf’s photography:

With a population of over 7 million people packed into an area of 426 square miles, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. As with other places where development cannot expand horizontally, apartment buildings tend to get taller and taller in order to provide living space for all the inhabitants. German photographer Michael Wolf decided to capture this population density through a series of photographs studying the architecture of these high rises. The project is titled “Architecture of Density.”

The photographs offer a closeup view, turning the buildings into mesmerizing patterns of edges, windows, balconies, and air conditioning systems. In most of the photographs, the buildings completely fill up the frame, and the repetition is disorienting.

(Photo by Wolf, Architecture of Density)