Michael Wolf
Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
German photographer Michael Wolf examines life in the layered urban landscape, addressing public and private space, anonymity and individuality, history and modern development. From 1972-1973, he studied at the University of California at Berkeley and earned a degree in Visual Communication from the Folkwang School in Essen, Germany in 1976.
In 1994, Wolf moved to Hong Kong where he worked as a photojournalist for the German magazine Stern for 8 years. While working on his final story for the magazine, he identified the seeds of his first significant body of work, at which point he withdrew from editorial photography in order to pursue personal projects. He is best known for his pictures of Hong Kong’s highly compressed, often brutal architecture, in which he uses the city’s sky-scraping tower blocks to awe-inspiring effect, eliminating the sky and horizon line to flatten each image and turn these façades into seemingly never-ending abstractions. Wolf continues to live and work in Hong Kong.
Wolf has won first prize in the World Press Photo Award Competition twice (in 2005 & 2010) and was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet Photography Prize in 2010. He has published a number of books including Hong Kong Trilogy; Toyko Compression; Real Fake Art; Hong Kong Corner Houses; and The Transparent City.
Wolf’s work has been exhibited in numerous locations, including the Venice Biennale for Architecture; Aperture Gallery, New York; Museum Centre Vapriikki, Tampere, Finland; Museum for Work, Hamburg, Germany; and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. His work is held in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art; San Jose Museum of Art; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; and the German Museum for Architecture, Frankfurt.
Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program
Pier 24 Photography is pleased to present the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Each year, the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program brings six photographers, writers, and curators to San Francisco to offer free and open lectures, and to work one-on-one with students at California College of the Arts.
Larry Sultan Photography Award
Jonathan Calm
Fall 2019 Residency
Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA
Click HERE for more information on the Larry Sultan Photography Award
Jonathan Calm is a visual artist who works in photography, video, installation, and performance. A central theme of his work is the relationship between photography and urban architecture, and the powerful role of images in the way architectural constructs shape the lives of individuals and communities.
In his most recent work, Calm explores the complex representation of African-American automobility from a historical and contemporary perspective, focusing and drawing on the importance and resonance of the Negro Motorist Green Book. Of this project, he explains, “the image of the infinite highway and the unbridled freedom to roam the land has always been considered a quintessential expression of the modern American spirit, but the black American experience of travel, which involves heightened subjectivity and exposure, has to this day proven a precarious privilege rather than an inalienable right.”
Calm’s art practice is international in scope and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); Role Play at the Tate Britain (2006); Black Is, Black Ain’t at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society (2008); Streetwise at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid (2008) and the Chelsea Art Museum (2011); deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2013); and Rooted Movements at LMAKprojects in New York City (2014). Calm currently lives in Palo Alto, CA where he is a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.
Artist Videos
