thomas ruff - critical studies

Thomas Ruff believes that photographs can only show the surface of things. Photographs don’t explain anything to you, tell you of the subjects history or tell you what happened the moment before or after the photograph was taken. All photographs can do is show the skin of a reality that goes much deeper.

Nowhere is this idea more apparent than in his series “Portraits”, part of tate modern’s “UBS Openings: Photography From The UBS Art Collection” exhibition. These photographs taken by Ruff of his friends and family give no details of the subject’s life. Each photograph resembles a passport ID photo blown up to larger than real life size, each face expressionless, void of personality. The odd glimpse of individuality is lost within the rows of anonymous faces, the effect of which is disorientating. Your eye desperately searching for something that will tell you anything about these people’s lives, something that will allow you to build a story, offering these uknown faces a place in space and time. But there’s no such relief, just a growing sense of unease as you wonder why these people look at you with an air of distaste, like something they scraped off the bottom of their shoe.

Ruff studied photography under the Bechers in the late 1970’s, renouned for their style of detachment and use of only black and white photography. But Ruff soon decided to use colour in the Portraits series which he started in 1981, still studying at the Düsseldorf academy, stating that “colour is close to reality. The eye sees in colour.” And that “Black and white is too abstact for me”, challenging the traditional black and white documentary tradition of photography.

Ruff’s portraits are a reaction to the “terrorismushysterie”, the secret service that observed people opposed to nuclear power, and the “berufsverbot”, where left-wing teachers were dismissed in the 1970’s. Which he uses to explain why these faces are so expressionless, “why should my portraits be communicative at a time when you could be prosecuted for your sympathies?”

These pictures question photography’s ability to show what’s real, the semblance to reality is apparent. Ruff says “photography pretends”, it only touches the surface of things, unable to go any deeper it pretends to show a mirror image of reality.