Photographer Michael Wolf
German photographer Michael Wolf has made his fame and fortune photo-documenting the lives and street scenes of Hong Kong in exhibitions and books that have become wildly popular overseas. His most recent book, “Hong Kong Inside Outside,” is a collection of photographs capturing the density of Hong Kong’s architecture. He talks to Johannes Pong about his “lesser craft,” and his love for our fair city.
I was born in Munich, and grew up in America. I came to Hong Kong to photograph China for German magazines.
Back in the 70s, there were a lot of new magazines—and few trained photographers. There was a lot of opportunity.
My mother is an installation artist and my father is a painter. When you have two parents who are artists, there’s a lot of “been there, done that.” And they’ll tell you that photojournalism is a “lesser craft.”
My father is highly suspicious of my work. “You’re just successful because you market yourself well on this internet thing.”
Pretty soon, I felt that I had to do something in Hong Kong—here was this amazing city I’ve been living in, and I never did much with it.
My wife gave me two years to do what I wanted. If I didn’t succeed in whatever I was going to do in that period of time, I would have to go back and do something that I didn’t like for the money, which is what 90 percent of the world does.