China Photography

For people who are interested in hyper densities, manufacturing sector, people and images from china but have always been stopped by the inaccessible Chinese wall of media control and censorship, Michael Wolf's photography website might be an important source of visual images.His website describes him as having "born in Munich, Germany. He grew up in the USA and studied at UC Berkley and at the University of Essen in Germany. He has been living and working as a photographer and author in China for ten years...Wolf has been intensively concerned with the topic of vernacular culture for many years. His most recent work deals with the issue of the cultural identity of the city of Hong Kong. The exhibition "Architecture of Density" shown in New York in February 2004 is a part of Michael Wolf's Hong Kong project. Thames and Hudson will publish Michael Wolf’s new work "Hong Kong, The Front Door/The Back Door” in 2005".

On his website the section particularly dealing with Hong Kong contains some really beautiful images that seem to smoothly balance between art, archive and politics of image making. Within his China editorial work, his classifications of images and the archive itself is simple but extremely powerful. This seems to be one of the very few sites spared by the Chinese authorities. Below are some of the images by Michael Wolf from his website (the Hong Kong hyper density section)...