On Saturday 20th I attended the  Thomas Ruff exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery London. In the exhibition I seen a variety of his works which were produced between 1979 and 2017. The works included his self-portraits, Interiors series, the colour series, inverted negatives and his take on pornography.

 

The best part of this I felt were the self portrait and the interiors series.Although self-portraits, they are in all senses experimental and diffuse the general understating of portraiture. In this series, Ruff changes the approach to usual stance and pose. In the interior series however, Ruff captures the interior lives of friends and family. It captures the materialistic culture of the post-war Düsseldorf. Although there are no people and no presence of life featured in the photographs, the melancholic images capture the restraint and repression of its culture.

    

His later works consist of many photos that are accessed, borrowed and then edited to give them a whole new narrative. However I personally feel that the first photography works of Ruff depict much more concept than those of which are borrowed and manipulated.