WOLF, Michael - Hong Kong Umbrella - AS SIGNED COPY!

Background information

"Hong Kong's rich everyday culture is the subject of many of Michael WOLF's works. In his new book 'Hong Kong Umbrella', he focuses on the countless umbrellas in the back alleys of the metropolis. Stretched out and in all colors and patterns, they lie, stand and hang everywhere, protecting laundry, goods, stalls and motorcycles or someone taking a nap underneath.
But when a young man in Hong Kong opened a yellow umbrella during a demonstration in September 2014 to protect himself and his friends from pepper sprayed by the police, the yellow umbrella quickly became a symbol of the October Revolution and Occupy Central, the student movement campaigning for political freedom and the right to choose their own leaders. Lam Yik FEI photographed the peaceful demonstrators and the sometimes violent clashes with the authorities and, like Michael WOLF in the Back Alleys, placed the umbrella at the center. The images of the 'Umbrella Revolution' by Lam Yik FEI can therefore also be seen in this book." (© Hannes WANDERER, 2015)

Reception

"The umbrella, an object that has gone largely unnoticed in the art world ;-) - The only thing that spontaneously comes to mind is Spitzweg's oil painting 'The Poor Poet' (1839), where the poor poet has an umbrella stretched over his bed, or Comte de Lautreamont's (=Isidore Ducasse) verse 'Beautiful, like the meeting of a sewing machine with an umbrella on an operating table', in which many surrealists saw the core of their ideas captured. It is therefore interesting to see how many different variations photographer Michael WOLF found and photographed on his forays through Hong Kong. The mutation into a political object captured by Lam Yik Fei is also interesting." (© Richard G. SPORLEDER)

Additional information

"The out-of-print photo volume 'Hong Kong Umbrella' is already the fourth of the nine-volume photo book encyclopedia of street life in Hong Kong's back alleys." (© Hannes WANDERER, 2015)

About the prominent photographer Michael WOLF (1954-2019)

Photo books by and with works by Michael WOLF