Award-winning German photographer Michael Wolf passed away this week on Cheung Chau aged 64. HKFP shares his series on the city’s disappearing corner houses, courtesy of Blue Lotus Gallery.
Following on from Architecture of Density, Wolf’s corner house collection examines an often underappreciated phenomenon. These charming, residential-commercial buildings of the 1950s and ’60s are often overlooked in the high-density, vertical city – and they are rapidly disappearing.
Born in Munich in 1954, Wolf was raised in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He attended college at the University of California, Berkeley and later received a degree in visual communication from the University of Essen. He moved to Hong Kong in 1994 while working as a photojournalist for Stern magazine, and started working under his own name from 2002 onwards.
See also: Hong Kong’s mind-boggling density showcased in the late Michael Wolf’s classic photo series
The photographic presentation captures the inherent paradoxes of the typology’s architectural character: its quiet prominence, the attractiveness of its banality, and the tectonic chaos and vibrancy that give urban Hong Kong its endearing quality.
Wolf’s works are available via the Blue Lotus Gallery store, and via Book Depository.
