STRIKING PHOTOS SHOW THE REALITY OF THE TOKYO COMMUTE

Michael Wolf began documenting the crush of the Tokyo subway in 2010. Now, as the final edition of his series is published, the German photographer talks to Fiona Macdonald about images that have regularly gone viral over the past seven years.

Like the shapes of bodies frozen by ash in Pompeii – an exaggerated arm movement, or an open mouth breathing onto a window dripping with condensation – many of the people in Michael Wolf’s Tokyo Compression photos appear forced into odd poses. Yet these are unstaged images: the positions adopted simply show the everyday contortion of the subway commute.