Michael Wolf, a notable German photographer and artist who interchangeably works and lives in Paris and Hong Kong; although he was born in Germany, he was raised in America, Canada and Europe. He studied at a public high school, North Toronto Collegiate Institute and went to University of California, Berkeley. Wolf then acquired a degree from University of Essen, Germany, in visual communication in 1976. He started off in photojournalism with Stern, a German magazine, from Hong Kong.
In a competition known as the World Press Photo, he won his first prize in Contemporary Issues in 2004 for his photos published with an article, China: Factory of the World, in Stern.
According to Wolf, due to the turn down of the industry of magazines, photojournalism became boring and dense. Hence, in 2003 he started working on projects related to fine art photography.
Photographs made using Google street view became popular. He used this tool for Manhattan Street View, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Paris Street View. All the series are collectively called, a statement about art, by Michael Wolf.