{"id":1913,"date":"2009-10-24T19:58:56","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T19:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/?p=1913"},"modified":"2009-10-24T19:58:56","modified_gmt":"2009-10-24T19:58:56","slug":"thomas-ruff-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/thomas-ruff-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Ruff interview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.foto8.com\/live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/ruff_intro.jpg?w=1200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\u00a9 Thomas Ruff\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/>Thomas Ruff is <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>explaining the enduring concerns that have animated the work that has made him one of the most innovative and distinguished art photographers of recent decades: \u2018I always want to take the medium of photography into the picture, so that you are always aware that you are looking at an image \u2013 a photograph,\u2019 he says, before continuing, \u2018so, in the picture I hope you can see two things: the image itself, plus the reflection \u2013 or the thinking \u2013 about photography. I hope it\u2019s visible. I\u2019m an investigator, and it is as if I am investigating the grammar of photography.&#8217;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.foto8.com\/live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/ruff_camb.jpg?w=1200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\u00a9 Thomas Ruff\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>Ruff<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span> is talking long distance from Dusseldorf about the publication of a recently-completed series, <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span><em>jpegs<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>, in which low-resolution digitised internet pictures have been blown to oversize proportions. In the process, the images fracture and pixellate to reveal, or more accurately to foreground, surfaces comprised of intoxicating mosaics of coloured grids. Stand back, and an (often apocalyptic) image emerges; up front, the photograph\u2019s constituent elements and its underlying digital structure predominate.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span> Describing the genesis of the work, Ruff recalls, &#8216;Around 2002 I discovered that if you compress digital files using JPEG compression, the system creates what I felt was a very interesting pixel structure. So I started an investigation, asking myself &#8211; How does it work? Where does it come from? And then I decided to create whole images with this kind of abstract structure.&#8217;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.foto8.com\/live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/ruff2.jpg?w=1200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\u00a9 Thomas Ruff\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>&#8216;The <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>pictures I chose are mainly downloaded from the internet, but some are my own photographs taken with a small digital camera \u2013 and others are from books or postcards that attracted me. I had to re-scale the files to a very small size and then compress them as the worst possible quality JPEGS. Then I get my image. Mainly I let the technology do it, but of course where there are parts or colours I do not like I alter the result until I have a result I&#8217;m happy with.&#8217;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>The result is a body of wo<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>rk that at one level addresses the extraordinary expansion and proliferation of digital photography in recent years, a process that shows no sign of abating. For instance, the inception of Ruff\u2019s project pre-dates the billions of JPEGS now on Flickr, or the advent of the ubiquitous iPhone. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018<span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>Yes,\u2019 he agrees, \u2018but that\u2019s just the development of digital technology. If you go back to 1987, when for the first time I altered one of my images, it was nearly impossible to do it digitally. I really had to search for a company, who then said \u201cWe don\u2019t know if we can do it\u2026but we can try\u201d. Then digital photography grew during the 1990\u2019s with the popularity of big Macs and Photoshop. So by 2002 everybody had a digital camera, a computer and the software to do all that\u2019s necessary to work on digital images.&#8217;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>Given that, I remark how surprised I am that no one else has undertaken comparable work dealing with the technological impact of digitisation on photography. There is certainly no shortage of theorists debating the changes.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.foto8.com\/live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/ruff.jpg?w=1200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\u00a9 Thomas Ruff\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>&#8216;That also surprised me,&#8217; he replies, no doubt mindful of his years as a teacher at the Art Academy, &#8216;there are so many interesting photographers, but why don&#8217;t they think about the structure of photography? They&#8217;re young, they&#8217;re curious, but they&#8217;re not interested. So I had to do this work because no one else would.&#8217;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>Of course it is not the first time in his career that Ruff has explicitly addressed the effects and symptoms of the digitisation of photography. The controversial <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span><em>Nudes<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span> series (begun in 1999) dispassionately assembled samples of all manner of pornographic images found on the internet. As with <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span><em>jpegs,<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span> informational content vacillates in a dialectical play between photographic surface &#8211; in this case the striations, interruptions and \u2018white noise\u2019 of the digital file displayed on a screen \u2013 and pictorial depth. The effect is to prioritise the thoroughly mediated nature of the imagery, and by dint of repetition and accumulation, to suggest the rampant \u2018pornetration\u2019 of the Web.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>The formal devices employed in <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span><em>Nudes<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span> and <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span><em>jpegs<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span> achieve an alienating effect that perhaps suggests an ambivalence, or a resistance, towards the increased flow of digitised imagery. I wonder if Ruff aligns himself with those who believe that photography has undergone a revolution that has fundamentally changed its very nature; or does he side with those who suggest that change has been quantitative rather than qualitative?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018<span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>I\u2019m not very ideological,\u2019 he replies, \u2018so I think that digitisation has just presented us with a new tool in much the same way as adding a 500mm zoom lens to a camera that previously only had a normal lens does. Digital processing, the longer lens: they are just new tools. It\u2019s the author &#8211; and how he\u2019s working &#8211; who creates the image, not the camera or its system. Using an analogue camera you might shoot say three hundred photographs, and if you are lucky there will be one that is correct or perfect. Now, with digitisation, you can use the best parts from two or three different photographs. So in a way the result is the same, but the procedure or the workflow has changed.\u2019<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>Whereas <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>Ruff\u2019s series are usually defined by genre, <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span><em>jpegs<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span> represents a departure to the extent that format, not subject matter, is identified as the defining characteristic of the corpus. He ponders the reason and suggests it is a response to his own experience of working in a field that has so dramatically changed during his career.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018<span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>Maybe it\u2019s due to the evolution of photography. I think it was about 1977 when I started studying at the Art Academy<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>\u2026and the medium was completely different then. Of course, we were lucky because <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">in a way &#8211; in terms of the art scene &#8211; there was only wasteland or desert, and so we could do whatever we wanted. Now though I think it&#8217;s very hard for the young people because, since then, there have been such a lot of photographic images\u2026but you still have to find &#8211; you still have to invent &#8211; <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><em>the real image.\u2019<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018<span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>So n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>ow, after working for twenty\u2026no, thirty two years,\u2019 he corrects himself, laughing, \u2018perhaps I want to comment on those changes and show that I am not fixed on a particular kind of imagery: every series has its own technology and its own outlook \u2013 that is what makes them so different from each other.\u2019 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.foto8.com\/live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/ruff_nyc.jpg?w=1200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\u00a9 Thomas Ruff\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>With regard to the \u2018outlook\u2019 of <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span><em>jpegs<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>, scenes of destruction and ruin form a central thematic throughout the series \u2013 smoke pours from burning oil fields, the Twin Towers are ablaze, and Baghdad is subject to a night of Shock and Awe. But for the most part, specific references to recognisable events or locations are deliberately frustrated by Ruff\u2019s withholding of caption information.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018<span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>The <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span><em>jpegs<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span> are divided into three or four categories: the one I started with was \u2018catastrophes created by man,\u2019 then \u2018catastrophes created by nature.\u2019 Then <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">I added another category that included examples of nature coming back or conquering man-made creations. The idea was to create images or types of image that stand for 10 or 50 or 100 other images \u2013 in Germany we call it \u2018exemplarisch\u2019 or \u2018exemplary\u2019. I didn\u2019t want to choose a picture and say \u201cThis is Angkor Wat on the 10<\/span><\/span><sup><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">th<\/span><\/span><\/sup><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"> of February, 1988.\u201d That kind of information is Ok but it doesn\u2019t help you look at the image. So if you have a picture from 9\/11 of the Twin Towers in clouds of smoke&#8230;it&#8217;s not only the Twin Towers, but stands for any other building that was bombed in the last twenty years &#8211; either by terrorist attacks or the US army or the air force.\u2019<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">As a seeming counterpoint to such imagery Ruff has included pastoral scenes that include woodland sunrises, gently flowing rivers and flowering cherry blossom. As he explains though, the pictures are less bucolic than they might initially appear.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018<span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">I was on vacation on an island that was entirely man-made, a completely artificial creation for Western holidaymakers who think that it is idyllic. The sand, the palm trees, all the nature had been brought to the island. So it was not a paradise, it was completely artificial. And I decided to make a final category: idylls. They are <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>places that look beautifully untouched; but the images I chose or photographed are not true idylls &#8211;<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"> they lack real nature. There&#8217;s no place on the whole world where man has not left either his footstep or garbage.&#8217; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.foto8.com\/live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/ruff_nature.jpg?w=1200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\u00a9 Thomas Ruff\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>He agrees with me when I suggest that an apparent motive<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><span>, and certainly a consequence, of his work is the undermining or negation of those forms of photography he chooses to plunder or unmask. I remind him of his own accounts of the early years in Dusseldorf, when he first showed Bernd Becher a portfolio of pictures he had taken in the unsullied belief that they were, simply, beautiful. Why, I ask, have appropriation, alienation, analysis and nullification replaced the pursuit of beauty? <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">He pauses before answering, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018<span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">It is maybe because photography has been misused such a lot that I think you have to be very careful when you&#8217;re looking at a photograph. You always have to know the conditions under which it has been made &#8211; because otherwise you cannot read it, or you could misunderstand it, or the image can be misused. Since photography is such a realistic medium, it pretends that everything you&#8217;re looking at was in front of the camera. But in the meantime it wasn&#8217;t.\u2019<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018<span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">I think it was once said that \u201cThe illiterate of the future is not the person who cannot read, but the one who cannot read photographs properly.\u201d And maybe this is something that has followed me through my thirty two years of working with photographs.&#8217;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">jpegs \u2013 photographs by Thomas Ruff<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">publ. Aperture<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">\u00a340<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-GB\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Thomas Ruff talks to Guy Lane about his recently-completed series <em>jpegs, <\/em>and about digitisation and the grammar of photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[19],"tags":[359,49,986],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - 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