May 12
The Index
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- Michael Wolf - The Transparent City - Aperturehighlight
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Michael Wolf, from The Transparent City (Aperture, November 08)
Michael Wolf was offered the opportunity to live out in Chicago the fantasy of billions of city-dwellers: spying with a powerful telephoto lens the mysterious life of the people who live in the building across the street. A sentimental affair, a conspiracy - why not a murder, even? Michael Wolf saw none of that.
To tell the truth, voyeurism was only one of the aspects his project involved. Commissioned in 2007 by the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography, Wolf's work bears on the influence of architecture upon the social, professional, and private lives of downtown dwellers. The artist was riding Chicago's aerial train in 2005 when he first thought of photographing the city and its architectural clashes. For in Chicago, a neo-gothic building can stand next to an ultra-modern, glass-clad highrise, level differences can reach tens of floors, and one is often greeted by the surprising sight of private homes where offices are expected, and vice-versa.
These pictures, collected inside The Transparent City, are a counterpart to Architecture of Density (2004), Wolf's recent work on the city of Hong Kong. The terrifying linearity of the Asian metropolis gives way to more varied urban panoramas spanning different depths. But the same care for graphic composition crops up, as well as the sense of oppression crafted by removing the horizon line.
The long November nights on the roofs of Chicago did not turn Wolf into a witness of shady goings-on. Instead, they leave behind the image of a giant termitary ploughing away in monotonous routine, a world where solitude is palpable, nestled in office meetings and listless nights spent before a computer or television screen. This emptiness strengthens the sensation of vertigo induced by these distressingly beautiful pictures.
In this environment of white collars and undershirts, imagination has precious little to go on. Unless, of course, it is all happening behind the closed doors of corridors the camera cannot reach, behind the pulled-down blinds, or inside the darkened spaces of this city - opaque.
Michael Wolf, The Transparent City, Aperture, New York, publication November 2008
See The Transparent City on www.photomichaelwolf.com
Buy The Transparent City on www.aperture.org
Michael Wolf exhibits his work at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography, November 14, 08 through January 31, 09
See the exhibition's page on www.mocp.org
