Nikolaus von Wolff: "Philosophy of Money"

Promptography on Hahnemühle Fine Art Paper

READERS series from 2023

Size: 50 x 50 cm

Edition: 3 + 1 AP

Signed, titled and edition numbered by the artist in pencil on the verso.

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Georg Simmel's The Philosophy of Money is one of the central texts on the cultural dimension of economics. Von Wolff stages it in the hands of a woman engrossed in reading on a train—while outside, faceless figures pass by through the fogged-up window. The work unfolds a dense symbolism: within, individual reflection on value and exchange, outside, the anonymous mass. The scene appears like a photographic snapshot, but precisely the flawless lighting, the uncanny clarity of the book's title, and the macroscopic perfection of the composition point to its artificiality. Just as Simmel pushes the question of the nature of money beyond the purely material, von Wolff transfers photography into a sphere in which the "real" is no longer measured by its origin, but by its effect.

The Readers series as a whole unfolds precisely this ambivalence. In suggestive images of people reading in public, von Wolff evokes the atmosphere of late modernism, a black-and-white nostalgia reminiscent of documentary photography of the 1980s. Yet the timeless quality of the composition, the balance of chance and staging, betrays the presence of AI. Its true content lies in this tension: Readers examines how authenticity emerges, how we imagine the past, and how fiction shapes our visual memory. The train or bus becomes a stage, the book an anchor of cultural depth, the image itself a puzzle. Thus, von Wolff combines philosophical reflection with visual poetry, demonstrating that the question of value, truth, and reality today is not merely economic, but profoundly aesthetic.