Thomas Ruff German, b. 1958

Thomas Ruff, born in Zell am Harmersbach, Germany, in 1958, is a leading figure in contemporary photography. A student of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, he emerged in the late 1970s with a cool, conceptual approach that continues to probe photography’s uneasy relationship with truth, memory, and technology. Ruff works in series, moving from domestic interiors and deadpan portraits to manipulated newspaper images, night-vision scenes, and luminous star fields drawn from astronomical archives. Though visually distinct, these bodies of work share a central concern: how images shape what we think we see, and how much they leave out. His decision to use colour, embrace digital tools, and scale his photographs to architectural proportions signalled an early break with tradition – one that would define his career.

Ruff has worked in series throughout his career, each exploring a distinct facet of photography’s language. His early Interieurs (1979–1983), made while still a student, reflect a quiet admiration for Walker Evans and Eugène Atget – small, observational studies of domestic life in his Düsseldorf flat. With Porträts (1981–present), he adopted the neutral tone of passport photography, rendering his subjects at monumental scale and prompting subtle questions about identity, presence, and authenticity. In Sterne (1989–1992), Ruff drew on archival telescope data from the European Southern Observatory to produce vast, star-filled skies – images at once scientifically precise and emotionally resonant, touching on the sublime. His Häuser series (1987–1991) turns to the façades of post-war German architecture, digitally altered to emphasise their detached, rational order against the background of social reconstruction. Other key works include Zeitungsfotos (1990–1991), which isolates and enlarges press images to strip them of context, and Nächte (1992–1996), where night-vision technology is used to haunting effect, capturing conflict zones in eerie green tones.

From 1977 to 1985, Ruff studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where fellow students included Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth. He went on to spend six months at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and later held a scholarship at Villa Massimo in Rome. In 2012, a comprehensive survey was presented at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Other recent solo exhibitions include those organised by Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga (CAC), Málaga; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover. Ruff’s work is held in prestigious museum collections worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Chicago; Museum of Art, Dallas; Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; K20 – Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent. Ruff continues to live and work in Düsseldorf, pushing the boundaries of photography in the digital age.