Thomas Ruff is a German photographer, born 10th Feb 1958, he lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany. He is hailed as one of the most important photographers of modern times. In 2007, Ruff completed a series of images entitled ‘Jpegs’, where he took images primarily from the internet and enlarged them to the point of pixel degradation.
Below is a review of two reviews of this body of work, from authors Joerg Colberg and David Company.
The authors have delved into the work of Ruff with differing perspectives. Colberg appears to make his assessment at surface level, whereas Campany goes to a much greater depth in his analysis.
Campany celebrates Ruff’s position as an innovator and attempts to climb inside the psyche of such experimental practitioners. Acknowledging the subject of ‘archive’ in Ruff’s Jpegs, he attributes its use to a means of holding onto sanity in an increasingly illogical world.
Colberg, although appreciative of the images on their own merit, feels strongly that the concept of Jpegs relies too heavily on technique, and fails to see any further significance. He appears underwhelmed by the execution, although he does acknowledge that Ruff is pushing boundaries.
Colberg is unapologetic in his conclusion that the series works better as a printed book, rather than its original large-format which was initially developed for gallery viewing. In comparison, Campany moves past commenting on either format, choosing to interpret and voice opinion on the concept of the work and its reflection of modern society. He discusses the notion that all imagery has scope to be digitised, whether captured originally as a digital image, or, shot onto film. The process of printing photographs within a book, for example, requires them to first be scanned.
An interesting comparison in then drawn by Campany between the first use of ‘grain’ in images and the over-exaggeration of the artefacts on Ruff’s work, citing how both technically represent the ‘limit’ of their specific medium.
These are two very different perspectives on the same series of work, and suggest that there is deeper meaning in every image or set of images, should you take the time to investigate.
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References
Joerg Colberg. 2009. Conscientious. [ONLINE] Available at: http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2009/04/review_jpegs_by_thomas_ruff/. [Accessed 10 June 2017].
David Campany. 2008. Thomas Ruff: Aesthetic of the Pixel. [ONLINE] Available at: http://davidcampany.com/thomas-ruff-the-aesthetics-of-the-pixel/. [Accessed 10 June 2017].
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