Andere Doppelportraits

Thomas Ruff was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach, Germany and studied photography from 1977 to 1985 with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the art academy in Dusseldorf. He later lead the photography class from 2000 to 2006. Ruff is best known for his large-scale portraits. The viewer must question how he judges people on a first glance - what one actually sees or what one assumes to see, when looking at one of the portraits. Ruff is interested in the illusiory effects of the first sight. The work cycle “Other Portraits“ was created by Ruff with the help of the "Minolta-Montage-Unit", an image generator used by many State Offices of Criminal Investigation for the production of phantom images in the 1970s. Ruff merges two portraits into one, photographs the ghostly result and uses them as templates for his screenprints.