Art photographer reaps rewards of snap decisions

Sitting in his Chai Wan studio, photographer Michael Wolf is looking back at his life. "I had a mid-life crisis. I was 39 and working on a story about Van Gogh fakes in Amsterdam. For some reason that evening, I became quite reflective and I wondered what I was doing with my life," he says.

"I wasn't satisfied and needed a change. I lay on my bed, closed my eyes and pictured a globe. And I went everywhere on it. I was willing to do anything, but I needed to feel it. Athens, Moscow, Buenos Aires. In the end I landed on Hong Kong. I had never thought about that city before, but it was like an epiphany. I knew right then and there that I had to go. It was a wonderful moment."

We've been talking for at least an hour and Wolf doesn't look like stopping. Time has evaporated. He's loquacious and accommodating. In 20 minutes we'll head up to the roof to do a photoshoot, and he'll lead me to the highest point of the industrial building and lie as close to the edge as possible.

One of Hong Kong's most respected photographers, Wolf is best known here for his photos of buildings: high-rise apartments in all kinds of weary-looking states and colours, cropped and straightened in such a way that the windows reach the edges of the frame and beyond. Look closer and you can see the clothes hanging out to dry, or a figure in one of the windows. Wolf's large photos display a sense of the infinite that is as misleading as it is real.

"These were shot with an Arca-Swiss Misura and Zeiss lenses, so this is almost exactly as it is," he says. "If I really were to be objective, I'd go back and show you the whole building, but then you might say 'So what?' These pictures are misrepresenting the truth anyway, as by cropping away the sky and horizon I am making the suggestion that they are bigger than they are. I am creating an illusion."

These days, wander down any grimy, dark back alley from North Point to Lai Chi Kok, and you may find a man in his 50s taking photos of mops and gloves, windows, chairs, lost laundry, and other implements of the working man. The mundane and the ordinary interest Wolf, alongside the sublime. "I think it has a lot to do with my background. I travelled a lot as a child, and was a habitual flea market visitor. I was interested in old, broken, so-called 'useless' things. It's part of who I am. That's the way I'm wired."

These particular photos - some of which date back a decade or so but have been languishing on his computer or in his cupboards - form the basis of the latest book that is as abstract as it is quotidian. will be released later this month, and it features photos of everyday objects found on Hong Kong's streets, shot on regular 35mm, as well as 4x5 and his iPhone. The book is small, as are the photos, a sea change from the large-format photos he produced for the "Architecture of Density" series.