Häuser (Houses)
In this series, Ruff develops a pictorial idea first explored in his early series, Interieurs (Interiors) (1979–1983), and continued with his Porträts (Portraits) (1981–1991/1998–2001), where he sought to eliminate subjective experience in favor of deadpan and disinterested compositions. For Häuser (Houses), he drove around Düsseldorf in search of unassuming buildings from the 1950s to 1970s, which he would photograph during early morning hours in order to limit any signs of life. Most images were taken between January and March, when the sky was more often uniformly gray and bleak, or expressionless. Inspired by photographers such as August Sander as well as postwar architectural photography, Ruff presents each of the buildings at a distance, allowing him to include as much as possible within the composition. The resulting works appear both timeless and specific.. Ruff used new digital imaging technologies to touch up two of the photographs (Haus Nr. 1 (1987) and Haus Nr. 8 (1988) in line with the principle of “touch up as much as necessary and as little as possible."1 As such, he deliberately compromised the seemingly documentary nature of the series in order to stay faithful to his preconceived pictorial vision.
1 Valeria Liebermann, Thomas Ruff: Works 1979-2011. Exh. cat. (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel and Haus der Kunst, 2012), p. 70.