Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff is a contemporary German photographer.  He has done a lot of with with appropriating images, but before that in the 1980s, he made this body of work.  In the gallery all of the images are enormous, over 8 ft tall.  This work is less about the people in the photographs and is more about the method and structure of the project.  All of the images are on simple backgrounds with deadpan expressions.   They are all the same distance to the camera and have very similar light.  This creates a typology.  That simply means that it is a study of types.  In this case, a typology of Germans in the 1980s.  One other thing that I think is worth noting is that these images also reference ID pictures, passports or drivers licenses which is another kind of typology.  There is a great interview with him at the Journal of Contemporary Art website.  Click here or find it on the list of resources.