Wolf, Michael; texts by Baker, Kenneth and Young, Douglas — Hong Kong: front door / back door

Book Good Dust Jacket Included 1st Edition Thames & Hudson Ltd, London English text.; Hardcover (with dust jacket).; 28 x 37 cm.; 1.6 kg.; 119 pages with 71 colour photographs.; Used with signs of wear on the exterior and interior. The dust jacket shows edge wear, scuffs and scratches. The edges are slightly bumped and turning inwards. The bottom and top of the spine are also bumped. Interior with signs of wear, namely a few pages that show signs of have been bent in the past.; Surprising and at times shocking, this visual journey takes us through the narrow streets and broad cityscapes of one of the most heavily populated corners of the globe. Yet it is also an insight into a peculiarly unpopulated place, inhabited only by the traces of city dwellers. The dense architecture and dark back alleys of Hong Kong are home to strangely animated objects that at first glance appear to be the random detritus of the manmade world. But under the close scrutiny of Michael Wolf's photographic eye, these articles become fascinating installation pieces, while the abstract patterns on high-rise blocks reveal the beauty and order that underlie the city's apparent chaos. The scale of Wolf's vision alternates between the grand and the intimate, capturing both the striking facades of the buildings themselves and the minute human interventions that mark them. Wolf's photographs reflect a deft combination of Western aesthetic formalism and Eastern wabi-sabi. The accompanying texts by Kenneth Baker and Douglas Young explore the choices people make of lifestyle, forms, functions, identity and design, as well as the notion of Hong Kong as a brand.