TC Composite #1, 2009

Aperture is pleased to offer this very special limited-edition photograph to our collecting audience in conjunction with the publication and exhibition of Michael Wolf: The Transparent City at Aperture Gallery in November 2009.

Here, Wolf has reinterpreted the work by producing a print; it is a composite of two images he created for the series, The Transparent City. Like many urban centers, Chicago has recently undergone a surge in new construction, grafting a new layer of experimentation onto past eras. In 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, in collaboration with the U.S. Equities Realty artist-in-residence program, invited Michael Wolf to photograph the Chicago cityscape.

This is Wolf's first body of work to address an American city. Whereas prior series have juxtaposed humanizing details within the surrounding geometry of the urban landscape, in The Transparent City his details are fragments of life—digitally distorted and hyper-enlarged, snatched through a telephoto lens.

In Transparent City Composite #1, we view both sides of this wonderful project—the architectonic work for which Wolf is well known aligned with one of his details that speaks to the modern lives unfolding within the framework of the ever-growing contemporary city.

C-Print
Image Size: 20 x 32 inches
Paper Size: 26 x 38 inches
Edition of 25 + 4 Artist Proofs
Signed and numbered by the artist

Michael Wolf (b. 1954, Munich, Germany; d. 2019, Cheung Chau, Hong Kong) was a German-born artist and photographer who had a unique approach to documenting daily life in big cities. Primarily working in Hong Kong and Paris, he captured photographs of human life and interactions within the city’s architectural patterns and structures. Wolf studied at UC Berkley and the University of Essen with Otto Steinert in Germany. His books include Sitting in China (2002), Hong Kong, Front Door/Back Door (2005), and The Transparent City (Museum of Contemporary Photography/Aperture, 2008).