Thomas Ruff
Photographs 1979-2017 Whitechapel Gallery 27 SEPTEMBER 2017 – 21 JANUARY 2018 £12.95
German photographer, Thomas Ruff is best known for his contemporary images, displaying ordinary things in beautiful detail. The beginning of the exhibition shows large-scale portraits of his friends, family and acquaintances. The portraits are in the style of passport photographs; subjects stand in front of a white background and do not reveal any expression. No smiles, no frowns, no emotion present – these images do not give much away, and although they are satisfying to look at in terms of skill, they left me cold.
As well as photographing friends and family, Ruff also photographs their homes. The homes themselves are neat, sterile, clinical even. Much like the portraiture, the depictions of the interior of these homes gives nothing away about the people which inhabit the space. Ruff has taken two subjects which typically give the most away about a person (their face, their home) and made them nondescript and opaque. Some may say this is clever, others (like me), will say it is a massive shame.
Ruff then goes on to show three vastly blown-up images detailing disasters such as the 9/11 attacks. Whilst these images were probably great photo-journalistic works at their original size, Ruff has completely distorted and rid the images of any detail by enlarging them to this scale – quite defeating the point. Whilst some have described these works as inspiring and captivating, I thought they were pixelated, out of focus mistakes. The original images were not works of Ruff in the first instance, furthermore, what is the point of viewing an image where the whole subject matter is unrecognisable?
Ruff’s photography has no real linearity or consistency in terms of a theme, we jump from portraiture, to still life, to distorted photojournalism and even some pornographic works. Ruff then introduces us to his starscapes: showing the night sky in excellent detail as well as a 3D image of a crater on Mars. These works are excellent in terms of detail and capturing lifelike representations, however, much like the rest of Ruff’s work, the aesthetic element is missing. As educational material, these images get top marks, but whilst they work as excellent documentation of the night sky they fail to be imaginative, different or aesthetically enthralling.
Towards the end of the exhibition, Ruff tries his hand at digital photo montage, a rather pointless endeavour if you ask me. The beauty of darkroom photo montage is that you can play around with physical objects and make the whole process an artistic experiment, discovering how different textures, materials and objects can have different effects and create fantastic artistic works. Digitally, this whole hands-on, experimental approach is eliminated. The activity turns from physically placing object of a piece of photographic paper to pressing different buttons. It seems farcical, fake, and well, just a bit of a waste of time.
Thomas Ruff is applauded by many as a pioneer of modernist photography. He captures form and detail excellently, however, seems to lack the expression and emotion many people crave from works of art. If I’m completely honest, his works fell flat with me and I found the vast majority of them just a bit too ordinary to be inspiring.
OVERALL RATING: **
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/thomas-ruff/
