All this economy mayhem with layoffs and cities panicked makes me all the more poised to snatch up Michael Wolf’s The Transparent City. I love the mix of private and public. Plus, the press release invokes Edward Hopper and Blade Runner.

See for yourself:

“Chicago, like many urban centers throughout the world, has recentlyundergone a surge of new construction, grafting a new layer ofarchitectural experimentation onto those of past eras. In early 2007,the Museum of Contemporary Photography‚ with the support of U.S.Equities Realty, invited Michael Wolf as an artist-in-residence.Bringing his unique perspective on changing urban environments to acity renowned for its architectural legacy, Wolf chose to photographthe central downtown area, focusing specifically on issues of voyeurismand the contemporary urban landscape in flux.

This is Wolf’sfirst body of work to address an American city. Whereas prior serieshave juxtaposed humanizing details within the surrounding geometry ofthe urban landscape, in The Transparent City, his details arefragments of life–digitally distorted and hyper-enlarged–snatchedsurreptitiously via telephoto lenses: Edward Hopper meets Blade Runner.The material resonates with all the formalism of the constructed,architectonic work for which Wolf is well-known, but also emphasizesthe conceptual underpinnings of his ongoing engagement with the idea ofhow modern life unfolds within the framework of the ever-growingcontemporary city.”

This project is really large, which adds to its importance, I think. See more of it, and more of Michael Wolf’s projects, here.