Michael Wolf: The Transparent City

Michael Wolf: The Transparent City Chicago, like many of the world’s great urban centers, has recently undergone a surge in new construction, grafting a new layer of architectural experimentation onto those of past eras. Bringing his unique perspective on changing urban environments to a city ... Read more

Michael Wolf: The Transparent City
Chicago, like many of the world’s great urban centers, has recently undergone a surge in new construction, grafting a new layer of architectural experimentation onto those of past eras. Bringing his unique perspective on changing urban environments to a city renowned for its architecture, Michael Wolf chose to photograph Chicago’s central downtown area, focusing specifically on issues of voyeurism and the contemporary urban landscape in flux. His first body of work to address an American city, Michael Wolf: The Transparent City opened at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago (MoCP), in November 2008. The show at Aperture marks the second U.S. venue for the exhibition. The work, which is accompanied by a book of the same title copublished by Aperture and MoCP last fall, was created as part of the Chicago-based U.S. Equities Realty Artist-in-Residence Program, in collaboration with MoCP.

Whereas Wolf’s prior series concentrated on the “architecture of density,” this most recent work invites the viewer to examine the transparency and fluidity of the new American cityscape. Juxtaposing humanizing details within the surrounding geometry of the urban landscape, fragments of everyday life—digitally distorted and hyper-enlarged—are snatched surreptitiously via telephoto lenses. Think Edward Hopper meets Blade Runner. In Michael Wolf: The Transparent City, Wolf’s work resonates with all the formalism of the constructed, architectural work for which he is known, and emphasizes his ongoing engagement with the idea of how modern life unfolds within the framework of the ever-growing contemporary city.