For a year I lived on the 16th floor of a 30 story building in East Lakeview. Living high enough in the sky to see out across the city is quite a magical thing. You really get to see so many things. From watching the Navy Pier fireworks twice a week from my couch to seeing Lincoln Park change with the seasons, it is quite beautiful. You also see into the lives of hundreds of people all around you, and this is something that intrigued me while living there.

It was not a perverted voyeurism, it was one of intrigue. I would occasionally stand in my window and look out at the buildings across from me and see people going about their lives. On one floor someone was on a treadmill. Just a few feet below a couple enjoying dinner. What I marveled at was how these people all around me lived so close to their neighbors and yet remained completely oblivious to what was happening on the other side of a wall or floorboard. At the same time you could occasionally catch someone doing the same as me, and I would wonder what the people around me were doing that they were watching and I was missing out on. Was the guy in 1503 reading a book? Having a party? Was he even home? Were the couple next door cuddled on the couch watching a movie? It was privileged information – reserved for those close, but not too close.

The Transparent City freshened a lot of these ideas for me. In one photograph that I particularly enjoyed, a child is in the window looking down at an angle and pointing at something. Another arm pokes out from behind the curtain and points with her. A few floors down and a handful of windows to the right are a pair of male legs, bare, the man clearly wrapped in a towel. How unlikely is this scenario – as they had to be completely unaware of each other, and yet here it was, happening, perfectly for the photographer.

Some of Wolf’s photographs will make you laugh. A businessperson giving the finger at exactly the right  moment. Or perhaps it was Wolf’s shutter that happened at exactly the right moment. Some will remind you of the stress and anxiety that a day can bring. A handful of images are pixel-laden mega-enlargements. How great is it to see each dot that makes up the photographer’s vision.

Michael Wolf’s The Transparent City runs until January 31, 2009 at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography. Admission is free.