Michael Wolf - Tokyo Compression

Michael Wolf is renowned for super-sized photographs of Chicago, and his home for the last fifteen years Hong Kong. Tokyo Compression captures a different aspect of an Asian metropolis the steamy subterranean hell of the citys underground system. Wolf has recorded the human response to one of the most stressful and unreal social environments imaginable. Caught in intimate detail, the sweating faces and contorted postures of Tokyos solemn commuters become a study of distress, resilience, commercial pressure and urban isolation. Yet the series ends happily a businessman, set free from the trains, plays with a cat in an airy park before heading home, work done.