Thomas Ruff, PhotographsGow Langsford GalleryUntil April 24thOne of the more significant aspects of the Thomas Ruff exhibition at the Gow Langsford Gallery is the high prices which international photographers are able to command. Works in his current show
Thomas Ruff, Photographs
Gow Langsford Gallery
Until April 24th
One of the more significant aspects of the Thomas Ruff exhibition at the Gow Langsford Gallery is the high prices which international photographers are able to command. Works in his current show are up to about $200,000.
Thomas Ruff is one of the leading German photographers whose work covers a range of visual styles and themes and the photographs in the show cover the period 1992 – 2009.
In many of his works he has documented his family and friends as well as well as buildings and interiors. Both the portraits and the architectural; works have the same observational, unexpressive approach, bleaching out expression.
The old dictum about the photograph never lying doesn't wortk with thses images as they are all slight distortions of reality.
His large (2100mm x 1650mm) photographic portraits such as “Portrait, S Ergolovitch” (€50,000 plus GST) are like enlarged passport style images where he attempts to have the sitter display no emotion and we scan the face to establish the person but are only able to read the surface detail of the flesh, hair, eyes etc. We search for non existent details which might provide clues as to the person and the narrative behind the image. The anonymity of the face calls on the viewer to invest the face with a personality but they keep coming back as Stepford wives and husbands.
Similarly the image of a modernist house “h.t.b.02” (€50,000 plus GST) appears to be a sanitized version of the building. It is somewhere between architectural photo, real estate advert and surveillance image. We can pick out details of the house and the interior but there is a sense of incompleteness.
In his series of soft porn images which have been manipulated so that they appear to be out of focus or pixilated and there is again a blurring of the original intention. There is a sense of incompleteness, and the viewer fails to invent and visualize the detail and the sensual tension which has been removed.
The earliest work in the exhibition dates from 1992 and like the nudes are not photographs he has taken himself. They are images of the night sky from a European observatory which he has used to create his own versions of the night sky. “STE 1;19 (02h 48m / -35°)” (€85,000 plus GST) looks more like an invented image of the cosmos, having false bright starry lights on a dense black background more suitable for a Halloween backdrop
With all these works there is an initial comprehension of the image but the simplicity and photographic honesty seems to disguise another dimension. There is a snse of the photographer wanting the image to be examined, reevaluated and then discarded or reinvented.
