Istanbul exhibition questions medium of photography

Maintaining his skepticism about the reality of photos typically published in contemporary magazines and newspapers, Thomas Ruff’s first solo exhibition in Turkey seeks to provide the viewer with a new understanding of the nature of photography.

“What people see is only what’s already inside them because every viewer connects different emotions and experience with photographs,” said the renowned German photographer, noting that many published photos are retouched and no longer represent reality.

His new exhibition started July 7 at Galerist Istanbul on İstiklal Avenue.

His constructivist approach is typical of his work and the obvious example is the “Portrait” series from 1986, where he took passport-photos of his friends.

“These portraits were a look back into the eye of Big Brother,” said Ruff; at times the surveillance aspect as in George Orwell’s “1984” become reality. “You only have to think of the security cameras hanging everywhere.”

Ruff is not an ordinary photographer as he is interested in the medium of the photograph itself and in employing existing visual materials to transform them into art.

After buying 29 x 29 cm negatives of night sky stars that were shot by the European Southern Observatory in the 1980s, he selected some sections, reproduced and enlarged them to 200 x 134 cm.

“One of my greatest passions is astronomy, but I was not able to shoot those photos on my own,” he said. Further appropriations occur in his “Newspaper” series and more recently his “Jpegs” series.

Asked if he considered himself a photographer, an artist or even both, Ruff said: “I studied photography at the Düsseldorfer art academy, so I am an artist. It always depends on the photograph. If it’s really good then it is art and will become a historic photography, like the work of war photographer Robert Capa.”

Nudes and Jpegs 

With the exception of small “Newspaper photos,” which cover Galerist’s wall from one end to another, Ruff has appreciates large dimensions. He is a photographer who knows precisely where his interests lie – in the image produced and its means of production – and precisely where his control leaves off – at the level of interpretation.

Next to his breathtaking “Sterne” series, there are two big pictures of his “Substrat” series, where Ruff uses digital tools on Japanese Manga pictures downloaded from the Internet, to reshape them as abstract metaphysical images. With this series he created photos without any meaning, but the fluid colors revealed and the dazzling puzzle they offer serve to reach the deeper parts of the mind.

The main source of Ruff’s recent work, “Jpegs,” is – as its name implies – the popular type of compressed images in the digital world. During the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Ruff was shooting photos in the region with his camera; but all the images he had taken were corrupted.

As a result, he searched for similar images on the Internet and blew them to oversize proportions. From a moderate range the pictures look normal and focused. However, as the observer gets closer, they become more abstract and their underlying digital structures predominate.

The result is a body of work that at one level deals with the extraordinary expansion and proliferation of digital photography in recent years, a process that shows no sign of abating. But at the same time, it reflects the development of digital technology. Nowadays everyone has a digital camera, a computer and all the software to edit digital images.

With the “Nudes” series (begun in 1999) Ruff also addresses the effects and symptoms of the digitization of photography – but with a much more controversial approach.

He assembled samples of all manner of pornographic images found on the Internet, reshaped the low-resolution visuals and extended them to larger proportions.

The viewer can still see the nature of the image but it is slightly blurred and suddenly seems to become a painting. Ruff thinks that the diversity of sensual fantasies that can be reached on pornographic Internet sites presents a more realistic portrayal of the existing digital age than the minimized and conventionalized figures of traditional nude pictures and naked fashion photographs.

On the other hand Ruff transforms these pixilated visuals and reacts against the ordinariness of the pornographic images.

Finally he shows what pornography really is: It is people posing for photos – like the “Portrait” series (1986) with passport-photos of his friends that made him famous.