Michael Wolf, photojournalist and artist says the international award is great recognition
The mass number of factory workers reporting for duty at a single factory
Workers inserting laces into shoes at an Adidas factory in mainland China

Hong Kong-based photographer, Michael Wolf, clinched the first prize in the contemporary issues section of the World Press Photo annual awards, the most prestigious in press photography.

The winning series of twelve pictures portrayed the daily lives of factory workers in the Chinese mainland and was selected out of more than 69,000 images submitted by 4,266 photographers from 123 countries.

"China is known as the factory of the world and there is mass social change taking place. The theme through this pictorial story is to portray the sheer volume of products manufactured in China, and the workers behind them," explained Mr Wolf.

"I did a whole series of portraits to show that behind every object that we touch and use, there is a human being working on it. I wanted to put a face to this and give the workers due recognition," he said.

The pictures were taken for a 'China factory' story that appeared in the August 2004 issue of German-based Stern magazine. The factories were chosen from the southern China/Greater Guangdong area that produced everything from shoes, toys, electronics and television sets to office supplies and stationery.

"None of these pictures were taken undercover," he explained. "We approached over 100 factories on the mainland, out of which 23 gave permission." All the pictures were taken openly using a tripod and a medium-format camera.

 "As a photojournalist, the international award is a great recognition" enthused Mr Wolf. "I've always been fascinated with China, and it has been a tremendously rewarding 10 years capturing it in photographs."

Portraying Hong Kong's cultural identity

The next project on the horizon for Mr Wolf is to portray Hong Kong's unique architecture and its complex and densely populated city blocks. "This is something that you can't see anywhere else in the world," he said.

The photo exhibition, Architecture of Density, has shown at the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco, and in Bryant Park during New York Fashion Week 2004. It will soon be transformed into a book entitled Hong Kong: Front Door/Back Door, to be published in October 2005 by Thames and Hudson.

Mr Wolf was trained in Germany at the University of Essen under renowned photography professor Otto Steinert. He has worked as a Hong Kong-based photographer for Stern for 10 years and has published four books so far.

Related links
World Press Photo 
Architecture of Density