IN THE MAGAZINE

DON’T SAY CHEESE

Thomas Ruff Is Not Interested in Photography

INTERVIEW BY MAGDALENA VUKOVIC AND DAVID BOGNER

Portrait courtesy of Kunsthalle Wien, all other photos courtesy of Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff is one of Germany’s best living photographers. He has his roots in the type of sterile, objective photography that loves water towers, silos, and other vertical piles of industrial cement that somehow became a big part of German photography’s legacy. He did it better than most.

But then in the 80s Ruff starting shooting massive half-body portraits of people sitting there staring intensely into the lens, and it was a total revelation. The sheer magnitude of this series made it seem like nobody before Ruff had ever thought to take a picture of a person’s face. Before this approach could even be scooped up by market-making ogres, Ruff had found a new fascination and switched to rendering his mad vision of downloaded internet porn. The critics were either baffled or offended or both. The result was Nudes, a book you should go out and buy the second you’re done reading this entire magazine.

Since that book’s publication Ruff has quietly gone about his business of being one of Germany’s best-loved, lowest-profile photographers. When we were finally able to track him down, we were happy to find a kindly gent with a refreshingly plainspoken take on what it is he does.


Vice: I recently read up on a lot of what’s been written about you and your work—in particular the texts that accompany your photography. Do you read this stuff?
Thomas Ruff: I have to admit that I don’t care much about the texts. I read them once and that’s about it. I spend enough time doing my work. I don’t feel like providing theories or trying to put them into perspective. I know what I do and I can explain it. But I don’t have a superstructural theory or ideology that is above all my work.

I think many people are drawn to your portraits. Any idea why?
It might be because there is nothing more interesting or beautiful than a face or a portrait. As a student I only did small formats because I had no money for big prints, and everybody patted me on the back, saying, “Great, Thomas, nice photos. Keep it up!” Still, nobody bought them. I didn’t earn money.

Did you consider giving the large-scale fine-art work up for something more commercial?
I thought I would have to do commissioned work for the rest of my life and do art photography alongside. Then with the art portraits, everything turned around. This was the emancipation of contemporary photography in the art scene or on the art market.

Buyers and gallery-goers starting coming around.
Suddenly that stuff was in galleries or art fairs and people saw it and couldn’t believe it, that a picture of that size was possible. People who didn’t give a fuck about photography looked at a photo and liked it.

Why is that, do you think?
The big format simply has this physical presence—you just couldn’t ignore it. It didn’t matter anymore whether it was silk-screened or photographed.

Who are the people in the pictures?
These were all my friends and colleagues from the art academy in Düsseldorf. Once a year they have this walkabout, somewhat of an open-house week. The classrooms are cleaned up and the stuff you did last year is hung on the wall. In 1981 I put my first portraits up—since then whenever I asked somebody if they would sit for a portrait, they said yes. Ninety percent are colleagues, the rest are people I met in Ratinger Hof, a nearby bar. They were medical students, art historians, fashion designers, and so on.

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Comments

Anonymous, on Nov 22, 2009 wrote: did he just take photos of his computer screen ? sweet
	daddybourbon, on Nov 16, 2009 wrote: where can i find this book nudes?