Thomas RuffThomas Ruff

Published on the occassion of the first retrospective exhibition of Thomas Ruff's photographs in Germany in 1991. Ruff rose to international prominence in the late 1980s as a member of the Düsseldorf School, a group of young photographers who had studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the renowned Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and became known for their experimental approach to the medium and its evolving technological capabilities. Working in discrete series, Ruff has since conducted an in-depth examination of various photographic genres, including portraiture, the nude, landscape, and architectural photography. The artist’s overarching inquiry into the “grammar of photography” accounts not only for his heterogeneous subject matter but also for the extreme variation of technical means used to produce his series, ranging from anachronistic devices to the most advanced computer simulators and covering nearly all ground in between.