Thomas Ruff - "Dermatological realism"

Thomas Ruff is one of Germany's best known living photographers.
His roots are in the objective photography of Dusseldorf school. This was a group of photographers who were taught in the late 1970's and 80's by Bernd and Hilla Belcher and included photographer Andreas Gursky, Candida Hofer, Thomas Struth, Angelika Wengler and Petra Wunderlich.
The Belchers are best known for their photographic series of industrial buildings and structures, and were linked with Conceptual Art, with their depiction of banal scenes with cool detachment.
Ruff studied photography at the Dusseldorf Art Academy between 1977 and 1985.
Starting in 1981, he photographed passport-like portraits in black and white, subjects between 25 and 35 years old.
The images had the upper edge just above the hair, even lighting, solid colour backgrounds, while the individuals were shown with emotionless expressions, sometimes face-on and sometimes in profile. After 1986, he began to experiment with large-scale printing, producing images up to 2 by 1.5 meters.
The following year he settled on his format of a full frontal view and balancing any dominating colour by using a light and neutral background.

By appropriating this passport-style portraiture of young people with dead eyes and empty faces, he denies ability of the photograph to convey deep emotions of the sitter. 

Instead, by the use of scale, the portraits are only able to express the superficial, the surface of the subject, because as a viewer we become involved in the detail, looking at every pore, hair and blemish. 

Thus Ruff posits a photographic objectivity in the formalism of his approach with the monumental physical presence and deadpan rendering which overwhelms the individual personalities of those portrayed.

His subsequent series "Other Portraits", which enabled him to construct artificial faces from the combined features of men and women, exposed photographic objectivity to be a fiction. 

The success of the series were to consolidated his international reputation and give him the financial freedom to work on subsequent series of photographs. 

Portrait (P. Grote), 1986

Portrait Nr. 56/4, 1994

For me, it is the intensity of the gaze, both male and female which makes them such captivating and yet alarming portraits in their objective approach. 

They are and will be very influential to my approach to photographic portraiture.

Ruff appears to be rehearsing Andy Warhol’s deadpan Polaroid aesthetic while presenting to the spectators of his pictures frontally posed, bust-cut head-and-shoulder color photographs.
These could have been taken inside a photo booth, had not Ruff decided to blow up his pictures – and with it the faces of his characters – to monumental sizes.
The monumental size introduced in art photography in the 1980s – partly on account of the renewed interest in the relation between photography and painting – was tied to the wish to provide photography with an aura similar to that of painting.
The closer I came to Ruff’s huge portrait, the better I saw the details of the face but the less real the model seen as a person looked to me, increasing rather than diminishing the distance.
Ruff’s photographs look like photos for an identity card, that is identification photography, which presents measurable features rather than expressing personal identity, but the photos are sized like for an advertising board or political propaganda, other genres which also lack intimacy.
Contrary to the expectation with regard to a portrait to express personal identity, Ruff’s portraits emphasise that this is not possible.
Ruff himself explained that: “I have no interest to show my interpretation of a person. I depart from the idea that photography can only show the surface of things, the same goes for portraits”.
Personally, I appreciate and see were Thomas Ruff is coming from, what and how his peculiar style communicates.
However, what I look for in a work of art (and specifically in a fine art photograph) is "artist heat".
Being very direct, I really need to feel more passion and some warmer feelings than what Thomas Ruff expresses with his giant portraits.

Portrait (S. Weirauch), 1988

"Thomas Ruff's words amount to an ironic polemic against arbitrary interpretations of his photographs, and he likewise challenges the general availability of all things visible.
From the mouth of a pupil of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art this comes as no surprise.
Bernd and Hilla Becher, who teach at the latter institution, have promulgated a way of photographing architecture that is based on strict photographic realism, and in so doing have founded a veritable school.
But 'accepting a picture as a picture' neutrally, dispassionately and without passing judgment – that is no easy matter.
Thomas Ruff's portraits are unsettling simply on account of their immense scale.
Every detail, every pore, every pimple on these large-size faces is visible.
We would never stare so brashly at a living person.
Ruff's photographs dispense with this barrier of modesty.
We stare at the persons photographed – and they stare right back.
However, their distanced gaze in the pictures does not infest us.
On the contrary, it awakens our emotions.
We like or dislike the characters.
Some faces appeal to us, others less so.
And then we begin to think about who these people could be.
What are their occupations? Where do they come from? What is the story behind them?
Man is, by nature, curious.
We want to know what is hidden behind the facade, and a face is in a sense a facade." ("Dermatological realism" - DBAG website).

Portrait, 1988

Sophie Calle - L’Hôtel

In his Tutor's report, Robert suggested me to add a "Research" section to my blog and asked me to elaborate on few questions regarding Sophie Calle’s project “L’Hotel”.

Sophie Calle is a French artist and her work frequently depicts human vulnerability and examines identity and intimacy.
She is known for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives.

When first reading about Calle's work I was really impressed by her "Suite Venitienne" (1979), where she followed a man she met at a party in Paris to Venice and where she disguised herself and followed him around the city, photographing him.
Calle’s surveillance of the man, who she identifies only as Henri B., includes black and white photographs accompanied by text.

"I know so little about him, except that he had rain and fog the first days, that he now has sun, that he is never where I search. He is consuming me."

One of Calle's first projects to generate public controversy was Address Book (1983).
I like very much the idea and the story behind this photographic project.
The French daily newspaper Libération invited her to publish a series of 28 articles.
Having recently found an address book on the street (which she photocopied and returned to its owner), she decided to call some of the telephone numbers in the book and speak with the people about its owner.
To the transcripts of these conversations, Calle added photographs of the man's favorite activities, creating a portrait of a man she never met, by way of his acquaintances.
The articles were published, but upon discovering them, the owner of the address book, a documentary filmmaker named Pierre Baudry, threatened to sue the artist for invasion of privacy.
As Calle reports, the owner discovered a nude photograph of her, and demanded the newspaper publish it, in retaliation for what he perceived to be an unwelcome intrusion into his private life.

“Thus, I will get to know this man through his friends and acquaintances” 

"L’Hôtel" is one of the most well known works by Sophie Calle.
"On Monday, February 16, 1981, I was hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. I was assigned twelve bedrooms on the fourth floor. In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown to me. On Friday, March 6, the job came to an end." (Quoted in Calle, pp.140-1)

1. What did you think about Sophie Calle’s “L’Hotel”?

Sophie Calle's work takes the form of a collection of evidence using photographs and texts that document her practice.
The project is documented and this forms the presentation of the work including a behaviour close to stalking people.
What I like the most from “L’Hotel” is the story behind it.
I like the project, the forensic attitude, the almost obsessive accuracy, the detail.
Her art goes "beyond", she is "pure" and that is what I like.
In a way, she reminds me about the Magnum photographer Antoine D'Agata, met in a workshop in Luxembourg in 2010: an artist without compromises.
I appreciate a lot also her texts, used with her photos.
I like to write poems to match with my photos and, therefore, I am very sensitive to this kind of combination.
I do not find the photos from "L’Hôtel" particularly stunning, but I believe that they are not supposed to be. They are just there to document the project.
Calle's work is very much tied up with a process.
As she describes (below), the form of the final product - the thing which the gallery viewer actually sees - is the least significant part.

"For 'The Hotel' I spent one year to find the hotel, I spent three months going through the text and writing it, I spent three months going through the photographs and I spent one day deciding it would be this size and this frame...it's the last thought in the process."    

2. Can you ‘read’ anything about the characters of the inhabitants by interpreting the ‘traces’ they leave behind?

I found very interesting how Calle can identify the people in the rooms just by examining their belongings and how messy/clean they are and also as she quotes in one of them ‘the bed has not been slept in’.
What is it that really identifies people?
Calle is unashamedly voyeuristic, reading diaries, letters, postcards and notes written or kept by the unknown guests (sometimes evidence of family's troubles) and looking into wardrobes and drawers.
Listening at the room doors to some guests conversations and the sounds that are coming from the rooms it adds to her diary entries and helps her identify the ‘unknown’ guests.
As she describes in the interview reported below, her projects began in 1979 on returning from a trip to Paris after traveling abroad for seven years.
The way in which it has been described as though on her return she felt like a stranger within her own city and she had no idea on how to occupy her time.
Which is when she started to follow random passers-by and it developed on from there.
It made me think about all the possible ways you could go about identifying a particular person, she was in a unknown room and yet after investigation she knew about these guests that she hasn’t seen before?
An unusual but really inspiring piece of work that teaches how to look out of the box.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRx7nFVuLwA

3. Are you ethically challenged by her ‘nosey’ photographs of other people’s lives?

I believe that art is art and that every artist should follow his/her own inspiration and make it co-exist with his/her personal ethic.
I also believe that law is law and every person has to take responsibility of what he/she does in front of the law and that, in case of infringement, he/she should pay accordingly.
Personally, I would not feel my privacy offended if Sophie Calle decided to take me as a subject of one of her "investigative" works.
I would understand the essence of her project and very likely allow a break of my privacy.
I have a similar judgement in case I decided to undertake a similar project.
I like street photography and often I take pictures of unaware people.
I always have a great deal of respect and I do not take pictures of somebody who is not willing to be photographed.
However, often I do not know if my subject wanted or not. I just take the photo, without hiding, but without asking neither.
Where is the ethical border between do and don't?
Between my street photography and Calle's in the hotel?
Personally, my ethic would not stop me in undertaking a work like "L’Hôtel".
However, I appreciate that ethics and sensitivities are personal and can be radically different from one individual to another.
That is why our societies have got laws.