Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff.JPG

phg.11, 2013

Sagaponack

German artist Thomas Ruff was born in Zell am Hamersbach in 1958 and currently lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Ruff is a leading innovator in the generation of German artists from what is known as the Dusseldorf School that propelled photography into mainstream art. Open and explorative, he has pushed the limits of the medium, harnessing technologies both old and new—including night vision, hand-tinting, and stereoscopy—to reconceptualize architectural, astrological, pornographic, and portrait photography. In recent works, he has engaged the photogram, the camera-less technique advanced by Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy and others during the early twentieth century; and the visual properties of the photographic negative.

Works appear in

  • Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

  • Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin

  • Moderna Museet Stockholm

  • The Art Institute of Chicago

  • Dallas Museum of Art

  • National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

  • Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

  • Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford

  • National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen

  • Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent

  • Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.