Born July 30, 1954, in Munich; died April 24, 2019, in Hong Kong) was a German-American photographer known for his critical and visually striking explorations of life in global megacities.

Life and Work

Michael Wolf grew up in California and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as at the Folkwang School in Essen, Germany. In 1994, he moved to Hong Kong to work as a photojournalist for Stern magazine. Wolf lived in China for ten years and later resided in Paris with his family, working as a freelance photographer.

His work frequently examined urban density, architecture, and the psychological effects of contemporary city life. His installation The Real Toy Story was exhibited in Hong Kong, Chicago, and at the Museum der Arbeit in Hamburg. In 2005, Wolf received a World Press Photo Award in the category Contemporary Issues Stories.

Following acclaimed series documenting subway passengers and high-rise architecture in Tokyo and Hong Kong, Wolf published a body of work in 2011 based on enlarged photographic fragments captured from Google Street View. This project explored chance encounters and surveillance in the digital age and earned him an honorable mention at the World Press Photo Awards the same year.

From November 2018 to January 2019, Wolf was the subject of a major exhibition titled Michael Wolf: Life in Cities at the House of Photography in the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, organized in cooperation with the Fotomuseum Den Haag and curated by Wim van Sinderen. This final retrospective authorized by Wolf himself was subsequently shown at Urania Berlin from June to August 2019.

Wolf’s works are held in numerous international museum collections, including the Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Michael Wolf died in his apartment on Cheung Chau Island in Hong Kong, where he had lived since 1994 with his wife, Barbara Wolf. The couple had one son.

Reference List

Michael Wolf (photographer). (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved January 19, 2026, from https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wolf_(Fotograf)