THOMAS RUFF

Since the 1970s, Thomas Ruff’s photographic practice has included, but is not limited to: portraiture, domestic interiors and exteriors, manipulation of found images, astronomical documentation, photograms, digital abstractions created by algorithms, and 3D imagery. Studying under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Ruff was part of what came to be known as the ‘Düsseldorf School.’ In his iconic early series of portraits, subjects are pictured from the chest up, their blank faces are set against plain backgrounds that recall the expressionless genre of the passport photo. His photographs of interiors and exteriors reveal an egalitarian mode of representation. Grey post-war apartment blocks are presented not as failed utopian idylls but as objects of contemplation, whilst photographs of the interiors of the homes of friends and family are subject to an inscrutable eye for detail, be it a carefully placed houseplant or neatly ruched curtain. In the 1990s, found imagery became a point of interest for Ruff. His Nudes series took pornographic images from the Internet and subjected them to extreme distortion, refocusing attention on the act of looking itself rather than on the content, and referencing notions of voyeurism and exhibitionism in image production and reception. More recent work has looked to scientific archives and technologies. NASA has proved particularly influential, furnishing him with interplanetary images that he then enlarges and augments, using the latest methods of digital modelling to present abstract ribbons of computer-generated curves and maps that seemingly belong to the fields of mathematics and physics.