Thomas Ruff, Photographer

Thomas Ruff was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach, Germany. He attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1977 to 1985, where he studied under Bernd Becher. Ruff began photographing landscapes, but while he was still a student he transitioned to interiors (1979–83) and deadpan portraits of friends. His early portraits were black-and-white and small, but he soon switched to color, using solid backgrounds in different colors. He began to experiment with large-format printing in 1986, ultimately producing photographs up to seven by five feet in size. Ruff expanded beyond portraiture with Haus (1987–91), a series of building exteriors. In 1989, he produced a series of images depicting starry skies, derived from pictures he had obtained from the astronomy institute of the Ruhr-Universitt Bochum.