Anyone who caught the recent Prix Pictet exhibition in the Gallery of Photography will have noticed Michael Wolf’s Tokyo Compression prints of commuter faces smudged against windows in the crush of rush hour on the subways.
Life in Cities is a major exhibition of the German photographer featuring 12 series of photographs including the aforementioned Compression series, the sublime Paris Rooftops and his mesmeric Architecture of Density (2003–2014).
Its centrepiece is The Real Toy Story (2004–2018) which features more than 20,000 cheap toys bearing the Made in China tag. These provide the framework for Wolf to place portraits of the workers in these Chinese toy factories in their midst, contrasting their wearisome lot with overwhelming brightly coloured, mass-produced toys.
Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, until March 2
