THE TRANSPARENT CITY by Michael Wolf

Aperture, 2008 First edition, 109pp., 11 X 13 1/2" Hardcover

Fine

This was Wolf's first body of work to address an American city. Whereas prior series sought to juxtapose 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 surreptitiously via telephoto lenses: Edward Hopper meets "Blade Runner. The material resonates with all the formalism of the constructed, architectonic work for which Wolf is well-known, but also emphasizes the conceptual underpinnings of his ongoing engagement with the idea of how modern life unfolds within the framework of the ever-growing contemporary city.