Colecciones de arte

Porträt (G. Belz) 1985, 1986

DESCRIPTION

This portrait belongs to the first series Porträts, with which Ruff earned international recognition. He began the series in 1980, experimenting with the various options this genre had to offer, until he finally settled on mid-bust portraits and frontal lighting. In this first series, he chose a neutral coloured backdrop, which he replaced with a white one in his next series of portraits, begun in 1986. That same year he decided to enlarge the format of the portraits considerably, a groundbreaking proposal in fine art photography at the time.

This work was criticized for representing a select panorama of German youth, to which he responded with blaue Augen (1991), digitally modifying the subjects' eyes, rendering them blue.

With this gallery of portraits of friends and acquaintances wearing calm expressions, Ruff paradoxically managed to address anonymity with individuality. To this end, he worked from the idea that photography can portray only the superficial, whereby he was able to extract it from the person portrayed. Despite following the idea of a catalogue of characters, initiated by August Sander, Ruff overlooked the personality of the subjects, omitting any references other than that of their belonging to a specific generation and a specific place. C. D.