Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff is said to be one of the most influential photographers of today. Ruff was born in Germany and still lives there to this day in Düsseldorf. He was born on the 10th of February, 1958. His portrait work is often showed in gallery's on a massive scale. Huge in comparison to human beings. I think for his portrait work in-particular showing his work on a larger scale is very effective. It makes you really pay attention to detail and with the way in which he photographs people for his portraits this is very important, especially for the message he wants to send through his images. 

A quote from Ruff himself states, 'you can only look at the face, and from that start to imagine who this person might be.'

This suggesting that he wants you to look at the work and imagine what the person could be like. Think about what their life might be like. Having the image on a large scale to me is only helping the audience to think about this point. Another thing that would make the audience think more into who the person might be is that the people in the portraits are emotionless showing as little expression as possible, making sure not to give away away anything about their lives.

I am quite a fan of Thomas Ruffs work because i think it is a clever thing he does getting the audience to make assumptions on other peoples lives, i think this is a really cool and clever concept because the possibilities to peoples view on a persons life is endless. There will have been many many different assumptions that no one will ever know about. 

These are just three examples of Thomas Ruff's portrait work. These were three that i really liked. All of the backgrounds are very natural, pale colors. This makes the subject itself (the person) stand out a lot more. I also like how these three images have all got people with short hair even though they are both male and female. I did notice that the bottom image of the man had a match within it. The color of the guys shirt matches the color of his eyes. I am not sure if this was intentional or not but i do like the fact those things match its very subtle but it takes you not time at all to realise it. 

Another thing i realised was that the two women had minimal make up or none at all on. I think this is a really helpful when it comes down to his concept of having the audience guess or think about their lives without knowing anything about them because you can tell a lot about someone through how they dress.