Thomas Ruff (born 10 February 1958) is a German photographer who lives and works in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

, Germany. He has been described as "a master of edited and reimagined images". Ruff shares a studio on Düsseldorf's Hansaallee, with fellow German photographers Laurenz Berges,

Andreas Gursky Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his Large format (photography), large format architecture and Landscape photography, landscape colour photog ...

and Axel Hütte. The studio, a former municipal electricity station, includes a basement gallery.

Early life and education

One of six children, Thomas Ruff was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach in the Black Forest, Germany. In his youth, he was fascinated with

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley ( ; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction novel, non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the ...

's theories which inspired his photographs. In the summer of 1974, Ruff acquired his first camera. After attending an evening class in basic photography techniques, he started experimenting, taking shots similar to those he had seen in many amateur photography magazines. During his studies in Düsseldorf and inspired by the lectures of Benjamin HD Buchloh, Ruff developed his method of conceptual serial photography. Ruff began photographing landscapes, but while still a student, he transitioned to the interiors of German living quarters, with typical features of the 1950s to 1970s. This was followed by similar views of buildings and portraits of friends and acquaintances from the Düsseldorf art and music scene, initially in small formats. Ruff studied photography from 1977 to 1985 with

Bernd and Hilla Becher Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (; 20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007), and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015), were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their e ...

at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf Art Academy), where fellow students included the photographers

Candida Höfer Candida Höfer (born 4 February 1944) is a German photographer. She is a renowned photographer known for her exploration of public spaces and architecture. In her career she transitioned from portraiture to focusing on spaces like libraries and m ...

, Thomas Struth, Angelika Wengler, and Petra Wunderlich. In 1982, he spent six months at the

Cité internationale des arts The Cité internationale des arts is an artist-in-residence building complex which accommodates artists of all specialities and nationalities in Paris. It comprises two sites, one located in the Marais and the other in Montmartre. Approximately ...

in Paris. In 1993, he was a scholar at Villa Massimo in Rome.

Work

Ruff commented on his influences: "My teacher Bernd Becher, showed us photographs by Stephen Shore,

Joel Meyerowitz Joel Meyerowitz (born March 6, 1938) is an American street, portrait and landscape photographer. He began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the ide ...

, and the new American colour photographers." He is often compared with other members of a prominent generation of European photographers that, includes Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and

Rineke Dijkstra Rineke Dijkstra Royal Photographic Society#Distinctions and qualifications, HonFRPS (born 2 June 1959) is a Dutch photographer. She lives and works in Amsterdam."Thomas Ruff" at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, February 17 – May 20, 2012

Gagosian Gallery The Gagosian Gallery is a modern and contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. As of 2024, Gagosian employs 300 people at 19 exhibiti ...

. The resulting ''Portraits'' depict the individual persons – often Ruff's fellow students – framed as in a passport photo, typically shown with emotionless expressions, sometimes face-on, sometimes in profile, and in front of a plain background. Ruff began to experiment with large-format printing in 1986, ultimately producing photographs up to seven by five feet in size (210 × 165 cm). By 1987 Ruff had distilled the project in several ways, settling on an almost exclusive use of the full frontal view and enlarging the finished work to monumental proportions. Art critic Charles Hagen, writing for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', commented: "Blown up to wall-size proportions, the photographs looked like gigantic banners of Eastern European dictators."Charles Hagen (23 February 1996)
When Bland Plus Bland Equals More Than Bland
''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''. Because he found the effect of the colors too dominant in these, Ruff chose a light and neutral background for the portraits he made between 1986 and 1991. In a discussion with

Philip Pocock Philip Francis Pocock (2 July 1906 – 6 September 1984) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Toronto from 1971 to 1978. Early years Pocock was born in St. Thomas, Ontario, on 2 July 1906. After studying theology at St. Peter's Seminary ...

, Ruff mentions a connection between his portraits and the police observation methods in Germany in the 1970s during the German Autumn. Indeed, while experimenting with composite faces in 1992, Ruff came across the

Minolta was a Japanese manufacturer of cameras, lenses, camera accessories, photocopiers, fax machines, and laser printers. Minolta Co., Ltd., which is also known simply as Minolta, was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1928 as . It made the first integrated ...

Montage Unit, a picture generating machine, used by the German police in the 1970s to generate composite portraits. Through a combination of mirrors, four portraits, fed into the machine, produce one composite picture. Ruff started out reconstructing faces but soon found it more interesting to construct artificial faces, which often combine features of men and women, that do not, but could conceivably, exist in reality; this resulted in his ''Anderes Porträt'' series (1994–1995). Ruff intended that large groups of the approximately eight-by-ten-inch color portraits would be hung together, so to add variety he photographed each person against a colored backdrop.

''Häuser''

The series ''Häuser'' was created between 1987 and 1991. Ruff's building portraits are likewise serial, and have been edited digitally to remove obstructing details – a typifying method, which gives the images an exemplary character. Of these Ruff notes, "This type of building represents more or less the ideology and economy in the West German republic in the past thirty years." Architects

Herzog & de Meuron Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. is an international architecture firm headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, with additional offices in Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Munich, New York City, Paris, and San Francisco. Founded in 1978 by Jacques Herzog and ...

soon became aware of this form of architecture photography and invited Ruff to participate in their entry for the

Venice Biennale of Architecture The Venice Biennale of Architecture ( Italian: ''Mostra di Architettura di Venezia'') is an international exhibition showcasing architectural works from around the world, held in Venice, Italy, every other year. Originally held in even-numbered ...

in 1991 with a photograph of their building for Ricola. In 1999, Ruff made a series of digitally altered photographs of

modernist architecture Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, or the modern movement, is an architectural architectural movement, movement and architectural style, style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco Architectu ...

Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pionee ...

. The series ''l.m.v.d.r.'' – the initials of the architect – began as a commission offered to Ruff in 1999–2000 in connection with the renovation of Haus Lange and Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany. Having worked with architectural subject matter since the mid-1980s, Ruff was enlisted to photograph the Krefeld buildings as well as the

Barcelona Pavilion The Barcelona Pavilion (; ; "German Pavilion"), designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, was the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain. This building was used for the official opening of the G ...

and the

Villa Tugendhat Villa Tugendhat () is an architecturally significant building in Brno, Czech Republic. It is one of the pioneering prototypes of modern architecture in Europe, and was designed by the German architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich. ...

in Brno.

''Sterne'', ''Nacht'' and ''Zeitungsfotos''

These first series were followed in 1989 by images of the night sky, ''Sterne'', which were not based on photographs by Ruff, but rather on archived images ('Catalogue of the Southern Sky', including 600 negatives) he had acquired of the

European Southern Observatory The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 m ...

in the Andes in Chile. These photographs of the stars, taken with a specially designed telescopic lens, are described and catalogued with the precise time of day and exact geographic position. Ruff selected specific details from these photographs, which he enlarged to a uniform grand scale. From 1992 to 1995, during the first Gulf War, Ruff produced his ''Nacht'' series (1992–1996), night images of exteriors and buildings using the same night vision infrared technology developed for use, both military and in broadcast television, during the Gulf War. From 1994 to 1996, these were followed by

Stereoscopy Stereoscopy, also called stereoscopics or stereo imaging, is a technique for creating or enhancing the depth perception, illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any ster ...

images, and another series in the 1990s, ''Zeitungsfotos,'' consisted of newspaper clippings enlarged without their original subtitles.

''Nudes''

In 2003, Ruff published a photographic collection of "Nudes" with a text by the French author

Michel Houellebecq Michel Houellebecq (; born Michel Thomas on 26 February 1956) is a French author of novels, poems, and essays, as well as an occasional actor, filmmaker, and singer. His first book was a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. H ...

. Ruff's images here are based on Internet pornography, which was digitally processed and obscured without any camera or traditional photographic device. In 2009,

Aperture Foundation Aperture Foundation is a nonprofit arts institution, founded in 1952 by Ansel Adams, Minor White, Barbara Morgan (photographer), Barbara Morgan, Dorothea Lange, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall, Ernest Louie, Melton Ferris, and Dody Warren. Their ...

published ''JPEGs'', a large-scale book dedicated exclusively to his monumental series of pixilated enlargements of internet-culled images in the compressed

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

format. His ''Substrat'' series (2002–2003), based on images from Japanese manga and anime cartoons, continued this exploration of digitally altered Web-based pictures. However, he alters and manipulates the source material such that the work becomes an abstraction of forms and colors with no visual memory of the original source material. On 7 February 2011, one of his ''Nudes'' pictures appeared on the cover of ''

New York Magazine ''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Clay Felker and Milton Glaser in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker'' a ...

.''

''Zycles'', ''Cassini'', and ''ma.r.s.''

The artist's series ''Zycles'' and ''Cassini'' draw from scientific sources. ''Zycles'' are based on 3D renderings of mathematical curves that were inspired by Ruff's encounter with copperplate engravings found in 19th-century books on electromagnetism.Chang, Helen (7 August 2009).
Planet to Pixel: Ruff Abstractions of the Universe
(preview only; subscription required). ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

''. wsj.com. Retrieved 7 April 2018. Ruff translated these images via a 3D computer-modeling program, but instead of his usual flattening, he gave volume to 2D. The results are large inkjet prints on canvas of colored lines and swirls. The ''Cassini'' works are based on photographic captures of Saturn taken by NASA. Ruff has transformed the raw black and white prints with interjections of saturated color. In the ''ma.r.s.'' series, also sourced from the NASA website, Ruff has transformed the raw black and white fragmentary representations of the planet Mars with interjections of saturated color. He also digitally changed the perspective.Thomas Ruff: photograms and ma.r.s., March 28 – April 27, 2013

David Zwirner Gallery David Zwirner Gallery is an American contemporary art gallery owned by David Zwirner. It has four gallery spaces in New York City and one each in Los Angeles, London, Hong Kong, and Paris. History The Zwirner Gallery opened in 1993 on the gr ...

, New York. In addition to the large C-prints, he has experimented for the first time with 3D image-making.

''Photograms''

With ''Photograms,'' Ruff engages with the

photogram A photogram is a Photography, photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. The usual result is a negative shadow im ...

, the cameraless technique advanced by

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...

László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by Constructivism (art), con ...

, and others in the early twentieth century. The photograms series depict abstract shapes, lines, and spirals in seemingly random formations with varying degrees of transparency and illumination. The objects and the light in Ruff's ''Photograms'' derive from a virtual darkroom built by a custom-made software program.

''press++''

Exhibited for the first time at Sprüth Magers's Berlin gallery in 2017, the ''press++'' series is based on images that have been published in American newspapers and magazines from the 1920s to 1970s and that Ruff found on

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

. To produce these works, Ruff scans the front and back of each photograph and combines them digitally, considering the original image and crops, touch-ups, date stamps, scribbles, and smudges.Thomas Ruff: New Works, 7 July – 26 August 2017, Sprüth Magers, Berlin. After a number of collaborations with Swiss architects

, the firm designed a studio building for Ruff and Gursky in Düsseldorf.

''d.o.pe''

First exhibited at David Zwirner's 533 West 19th Street location in New York, the ''d.o.pe'' series takes its title from Aldous Huxley's autobiographical work '' The Doors of Perception'', which explores the author's experience using mescaline. For this series, Ruff prints fractal patterns created with a specialized software program onto industrial carpets, extending the artist's interest in the limits of human perception and the creation of digital imagery that is at once natural and artificial. The works reference artists such as

Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch (; ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch people, Dutch painter from Duchy of Brabant, Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, gene ...

and

Matthias Grünewald Matthias Grünewald ( – 31 August 1528; also known as Mathis Gothart Nithart) was a German Renaissance painter of religious works who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th cent ...

and Ruff's own formative adolescent experiences in the

Black Forest The Black Forest ( ) is a large forested mountain range in the States of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is th ...

Art market

The highest price reached by one of his photographs was when '' Jpeg pt01'' sold for £197,000 ($239,990) at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, on 8 March 2017.

Publications

*''1979 to the Present.''

Distributed Art Publishers D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. is an American company that distributes and publishes books on art, photography, design, and visual culture.

, 2003. Edited by Matthias Winzen. . With essays by Ute Eskildsen, Valeria Liebermann and Per Boym. A retrospective. *''Machines.'' Hatje Cantz, 2004. . With essays by Caroline Flosdorff and Michael Stüber. *''M.D.P.N.'' Milan: Charta, 2006. Edited by Fabrizio Tramontano. . With essays in English and Italian by Giovanni Leoni, Giancarlo Cosenza and Luigi Cosenza and an introduction by Giancarlo Cosenza. *''Thomas Ruff.'' Skira, 2009. . A retrospective. *''JPEGs.'' New York:

Aperture In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image o ...

, 2009. . With an essay by Bennet Simpson. *''Surfaces, Depths.'' Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2009. Edited by Gerald Matt. . With texts by Catherine Hug, Douglas Fogle, Kurt W. Forster, and Gerald Matt, and an interview by Matt with Ruff. *''Schwarzwald Landschaft.'' Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2010. . Text by Jochen Ludwig and Christiane Grathwohl-Scheffel. *''Stellar Landscapes.'' Heidelberg, Germany: Kehrer, 2012. . *''Works 1979–2011.'' Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2012. . With texts by Okwui Enwezor, Thomas Weski, and Valeria Liebermann. Exhibition catalogue. *''Sterne.'' London: Morel Books, 2013. . Edition of 1000 copies. *''Series.'' La Fábrica, 2014. . Text by José Manuel Costa and an interview by Valeria Liebermann with Ruff. *''Photograms and Negatives.'' New York: Rizzoli International, 2015. . Exhibition catalogue. *''Editions 1988–2014.'' Hatje Cantz, 2015. Edited by Jörg Schellmann. . With an introduction by Thomas Weski.

Film about Ruff

* – 50-minute documentary by Ralph Goertz. In German with English subtitles.

Collections

Ruff's work is held in the following permanent public collection: *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, New York City: 5 prints (as of December 2020) *

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

, UK: 5 prints (as of December 2020)

References

External links

Thomas Ruff at David Zwirner
incl. Selected Press, Exhibition Schedule

''Journal of Contemporary Art''
Thomas Ruff with Will Fenstermaker

The Brooklyn Rail ''The Brooklyn Rail'' is an American publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics, based in Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruff, Thomas 1958 births Living people Photographers from North Rhine-Westphalia Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni People from Ortenaukreis German contemporary artists 20th-century German photographers 21st-century German photographers German abstract photographers