Thomas Ruff
Encyclopedia
Thomas Ruff is an internationally renowned German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf
.
In the summer of 1974 Ruff acquired his first camera and after attending an evening class in the basic techniques of photography he started to experiment, taking shots similar to those he had seen in many amateur photography magazines.
Ruff studied photography from 1977 to 1985 with Bernd and Hilla Becher
at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
(Düsseldorf Art Academy), where fellow students included the photographers Andreas Gursky
, Candida Höfer
, Reinhard Mucha, Klaus Rinke, Thomas Struth
, Angelika Wengler, and Petra Wunderlich. In 1982, he spent six months at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 1993 he was a scholar at Villa Massimo
in Rome. Ruff names Walker Evans
, Eugène Atget
, Karl Blossfeld, Stephen Shore
and William Eggleston
as his main influences.
From 2000 to 2005 Ruff taught Photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
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 he was 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. The Portraits depict the individual persons framed as in a passport photo, typically shown with emotionless expressions, sometimes face-on, sometimes in profile, and in front of a plain background. His early portraits were black-and-white and small, but he soon switched to color, using solid backgrounds in different colors. He began to experiment with large-format printing in 1986, ultimately producing photographs up to seven by five feet in size. In a discussion with Philip Pocock
(Journal for Contemporary Art, 1993), Ruff mentions a connection between his portraits and the police observation methods in Germany in the 1970s during the German Autumn
.
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. By 1987 Ruff had distilled the project in several ways, settling on an almost exclusive use of the full frontal view, eliminating the colored backdrop in favor of unvarying white, and enlarging the finished work to monumental proportions.
Thomas 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."
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
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. From these photographs, Thomas Ruff selected specific details which he then enlarged to a uniform size. In the years from 1992 to 1995, during the first Gulf War, Ruff produced his Nacht series (1992–96), 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. In 1994 to 1996 these were followed by Stereoscopy
images, and another series in the 1990s, Zeitungsfotos, consisted of newspaper clippings enlarged without their original subtitles.
In 1999 the artist made a series of digitally altered photographs of Modernist architecture by Mies van der Rohe. 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
and the Villa Tugendhat
in Brno.
In 2003 Thomas Ruff published a photographic collection of "Nudes" with a text by the French author Michel Houellebecq
. Ruff's images here are based on Internet
pornography
, which was digitally processed and obscured without any camera or traditional photographic device. In 2009, the Aperture Foundation
in New York published jpegs, a large-scale book dedicated exclusively to his monumental series of pixilated enlargements of internet-culled images, all compressed using the standard JPEG
format. which intentionally uses JPEG
artifacts. His Substrat series (2002–03), 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 February 7, 2011, one of his Nudes pictures appeared on the cover of New York Magazine.
The artist's most recent 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 antique books on electromagnetism, and 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 colour.
After a number of collaborations with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron
, the firm designed a studio building for Ruff and Gursky in Düsseldorf. Ruff is represented by David Zwirner
, New York, Johnen Galerie, Berlin, and Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Frankfurt.
9 (1992), the Venice Biennale
(1995 and 2005), the Biennale of Sydney (1996), and the Bienal de São Paulo (2002).
, New York; Hamburger Bahnhof
– Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Moderna Museet
, Stockholm; The Art Institute of Chicago
; Essl Museum, Klosterneuberg; Dallas Museum of Art; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
, New York; and the Ackland Art Museum
, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
.
Life
Thomas Ruff, one of six children, was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach in the Black Forest, Germany. Ruff was an academic child excelling in maths and science. At an early age he became interested in astronomy and bought a small telescope.In the summer of 1974 Ruff acquired his first camera and after attending an evening class in the basic techniques of photography he started to experiment, taking shots similar to those he had seen in many amateur photography magazines.
Ruff studied photography from 1977 to 1985 with Bernd and Hilla Becher
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Bernard "Bernd" Becher , and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser , were German artists working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures.- Biography :Bernd Becher was born in Siegen...
at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, formerly Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well known for having produced many famous artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky...
(Düsseldorf Art Academy), where fellow students included the photographers Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky is a German visual artist known for his enormous architecture and landscape color photographs, often employing a high point of view...
, Candida Höfer
Candida Höfer
Candida Höfer is a Cologne, Germany-based photographer and a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students – Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth – Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly Conceptual approach...
, Reinhard Mucha, Klaus Rinke, Thomas Struth
Thomas Struth
Thomas Struth is a German photographer whose wide-ranging work includes depictions of detailed cityscapes, Asian jungles and family portraits. He is one of Germany's most widely exhibited and collected fine art photographers...
, Angelika Wengler, and Petra Wunderlich. In 1982, he spent six months at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 1993 he was a scholar at Villa Massimo
Villa Massimo
Villa Massimo, short for Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo , is a German art institute in Rome, established in 1910 and located in the Villa Massimo....
in Rome. Ruff names Walker Evans
Walker Evans
Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera...
, Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget was a French photographer noted for his photographs documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris....
, Karl Blossfeld, Stephen Shore
Stephen Shore
Stephen Shore is an American photographer known for his deadpan images of banal scenes and objects in the United States, and for his pioneering use of color in art photography.- Life and work :...
and William Eggleston
William Eggleston
William Eggleston , is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium to display in art galleries—which, until the 1970s, often tended to privilege work by photographers making black-and-white prints.- Early years...
as his main influences.
From 2000 to 2005 Ruff taught Photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Work
In 1979, to finance his studies, Ruff worked for a commercial photographer who made brochures for the building industry.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 he was 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. The Portraits depict the individual persons framed as in a passport photo, typically shown with emotionless expressions, sometimes face-on, sometimes in profile, and in front of a plain background. His early portraits were black-and-white and small, but he soon switched to color, using solid backgrounds in different colors. He began to experiment with large-format printing in 1986, ultimately producing photographs up to seven by five feet in size. In a discussion with Philip Pocock
Philip Pocock
Philip Pocock, artist, photographer and researcher, was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1954. Since the early 1990s, his work has been collaborative, situational, time-, code-, net-based and participatory....
(Journal for Contemporary Art, 1993), Ruff mentions a connection between his portraits and the police observation methods in Germany in the 1970s during the German Autumn
German Autumn
The German Autumn was a set of events in late 1977, associated with the kidnapping and murder of industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, President of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations and the Federation of German Industries , by the Red Army Faction , and the hijacking of the...
.
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. By 1987 Ruff had distilled the project in several ways, settling on an almost exclusive use of the full frontal view, eliminating the colored backdrop in favor of unvarying white, and enlarging the finished work to monumental proportions.
Thomas 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."
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
European Southern Observatory
The European Southern Observatory is an intergovernmental research organisation for astronomy, supported by fifteen countries...
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. From these photographs, Thomas Ruff selected specific details which he then enlarged to a uniform size. In the years from 1992 to 1995, during the first Gulf War, Ruff produced his Nacht series (1992–96), 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. In 1994 to 1996 these were followed by Stereoscopy
Stereoscopy
Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...
images, and another series in the 1990s, Zeitungsfotos, consisted of newspaper clippings enlarged without their original subtitles.
In 1999 the artist made a series of digitally altered photographs of Modernist architecture by Mies van der Rohe. 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
Barcelona Pavilion
The Barcelona Pavilion , designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain. This building was used for the official opening of the German section of the exhibition. It was an important building in the history of modern...
and the Villa Tugendhat
Villa Tugendhat
Villa Tugendhat is a historical building in Brno, Czech Republic. It is one of the pioneering prototypes of modern architecture in Europe, and was designed by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe...
in Brno.
In 2003 Thomas Ruff published a photographic collection of "Nudes" with a text by the French author Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq , born Michel Thomas, 26 February 1958—or 1956 —on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French author, filmmaker and poet. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire;...
. Ruff's images here are based on Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, which was digitally processed and obscured without any camera or traditional photographic device. In 2009, the Aperture Foundation
Aperture Foundation
The Aperture Foundation was founded in 1952 by Ansel Adams, Minor White, Barbara Morgan, Dorothea Lange, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall, Ernest Louie, Melton Ferris, and Dody Warren. Their vision was to create a forum for fine art photography, a new concept at the time. The first issue of...
in New York published jpegs, a large-scale book dedicated exclusively to his monumental series of pixilated enlargements of internet-culled images, all compressed using the standard JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
format. which intentionally uses JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
artifacts. His Substrat series (2002–03), 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 February 7, 2011, one of his Nudes pictures appeared on the cover of New York Magazine.
The artist's most recent 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 antique books on electromagnetism, and 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 colour.
After a number of collaborations with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron
Herzog & de Meuron
Herzog & de Meuron Architekten, BSA/SIA/ETH is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog , and Pierre de Meuron , closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of...
, the firm designed a studio building for Ruff and Gursky in Düsseldorf. Ruff is represented by David Zwirner
David Zwirner
David Zwirner is a gallerist and art dealer and owner of the David Zwirner Gallery in New York City. In 2010 Zwirner was listed at number four in the ArtReview annual "Power 100" list.-Early Life:...
, New York, Johnen Galerie, Berlin, and Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Frankfurt.
Selected exhibitions
Ruff has exhibited widely since his first gallery show at Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich, in 1981. His work has appeared in DocumentaDocumenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
9 (1992), the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
(1995 and 2005), the Biennale of Sydney (1996), and the Bienal de São Paulo (2002).
- 1988 Schloss Hardenberg, Velbert, Germany
- 1988 PortikusPortikusPortikus is an exhibition hall for contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main, originally founded in 1987 through the initiation of Kasper König, one of the most influential living curators of contemporary art. It's name derives from the surviving portico of the Stadtbibliothek from 1825 that was...
, Frankfurt, Germany - 1992 documentaDocumentadocumenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
IX, Kassel, Germany - 1995 Venice BiennaleVenice BiennaleThe Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, Italy - 2000 Museum Haus Lange, Frankfurt, Germany
- 2001 Chabot Museum, Rotterdam, Netherlands
- 2001 Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany
- 2002 Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany; Städtische Galerie LenbachhausLenbachhausThe Lenbachhaus in Munich houses an art museum and is part of Munich's "Kunstareal" .- The building :The Lenbachhaus was built as a Florentine-style villa for the painter Franz von Lenbach between 1887 and 1891 by Gabriel von Seidl...
, Munich, Germany - 2002 Artium Centro Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporaneo, Vitoria (Gasteiz), Spain
- 2003 Fundação de Serralves, Museu de Arte ContemporâneaSerralves FoundationSerralves Foundation is an art foundation whose mission is to raise the general public's awareness concerning contemporary art and the environment. The foundation is located in Porto, Portugal.-Casa de Serralves:...
, Porto, Portugal - 2003 Tate LiverpoolTate LiverpoolTate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development Corporation...
, Great Britain - 2003 Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany
- 2003 Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Busan, South Korea
- 2007 Moderna MuseetModerna MuseetModerna museet, the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, that was first opened in 1958. Its first manager was Pontus Hultén...
, Stockholm, Sweden - 2008 Mücsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary
- 2009 Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, Germany
- 2009 Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
- 2011 Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
Honors
- 2006 Infinity Award for Art, International Center of Photography, New York
- 1988 Förderpreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen für junge Künstler
- 1990 Dorothea von Stetten-Kunstpreis, Kunstmuseum Bonn
- 2003 Hans-Thoma-Preis, Hans-Thoma-Museum, Bernau
Collections
His work is held in the collections of many major museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of ArtMetropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
, New York; Hamburger Bahnhof
Hamburger Bahnhof
Hamburger Bahnhof is a former railway station in Berlin, Germany, on Invalidenstraße in the Moabit district opposite the Charité hospital. Today it serves as the Museum für Gegenwart , a contemporary art museum....
– Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Moderna Museet
Moderna Museet
Moderna museet, the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, that was first opened in 1958. Its first manager was Pontus Hultén...
, Stockholm; The Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
; Essl Museum, Klosterneuberg; Dallas Museum of Art; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
, New York; and the Ackland Art Museum
Ackland Art Museum
The Ackland Art Museum is a museum and academic unit of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was founded through the bequest of William Hayes Ackland to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is located at 101 S...
, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
External links
- Thomas Ruff at David Zwirner, incl. Selected Press, Exhibition Schedule
- Thomas Ruff: jpegs at The Aperture Foundation
- Tate Magazine (issue5): Thomas Ruff
- Interview with the artist, JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART
- Interview with the artist at Popphoto.com
- Thomas Ruff at Johnen Galerie, Berlin
- Thomas Ruff publications with Schellmann Art Production
- Ralph Goertz: The universe of Thomas Ruff, Deutsche WelleDeutsche WelleDeutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...
, video, 05:52.