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Editorial Reviews

Arguably the most versatile artist of the Dsseldorf School, Thomas Ruff reinvents himself as an artist, both conceptually and aesthetically, with each new body of work. From architectural photography to portraits, from aerial views and cityscapes to color abstractions and internet-derived nudes, Ruff constantly challenges the given meanings of photography. This book presents for the first time his most recent body of work, the so-called "Machine" pictures. In this series, Ruff borrows from the picture archive of a Dsseldorf machine factory, where he discovered glass negatives that had been used for commercial brochures. The artist scanned the negatives and then proceeded to digitally alter their color and size. By freeing these images from their original context and re-processing them, Ruff grants them a pictorial autonomy. Thus, with the Machines series, Ruff not only investigates the history of photography, but also ponders such fundamental questions as how something can appear in a picture, how we perceive pictures, and what role our assumptions about media play.