7/14/2017 INTERVIEW: "Thomas Ruff talks to Philip Pocock" (1993) | #ASX

FEATURED

INTERVIEW: Thomas Ru talks to Philip

Pocock(1993)
The ASX Team
May 11, 2009

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(/)

Thomas Ru talks to Philip Pocock (1993) (http://www.jca-online.com/ru .html)

Philip Pocock: Unlike the Neue Sachlichkeit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Objectivity)

of Sander or Renger-Patzsch (http://www.zabriskiegallery.com/exhibition.php?ex=16), there
is a clear crisis of belief in the objectivity of your medium in your work. True or false?

Thomas Ru : Its both. Its true and false. They also used the camera as an instrument to
take pictures. The di erence between them and me is that they believed to have captured
reality and I believe to have created a picture. We all lost bit by bit the belief in this so-called
objective capturing of real reality.

(http://www.theseamericans.com/)

Pocock: What do you mean by real reality?

Ru : Photography has been used for all kinds of interests for the past 150 years. Most of the
photos we come across today arent really authentic anymorethey have the authenticity of
a manipulated and prearranged reality. You have to know the conditions of a particular
photograph in order to understand it properly because the camera just copes what is in front
of it.

Pocock: Why did photography become so important in the art world?

Ru : Maybe its a question of generations. My generation, maybe the generation before, grew
up with photography, television, magazines. The surrounding is di erent from a hundred
years ago. Photography became the most influential medium in the Western world. So
nowadays you dont have to paint to be an artist. You can use photography in a realistic,
sachlich way. You can even do abstract photographs. Its become autonomous.

Pocock: Theres little personality in your portraits, little use in the buildings, and a skepticism
in photography ability to communicate anything real in the Stars. Does this mean3/24
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in photography ability to communicate anything real in the Stars. Does this mean
photography is empty in a traditional sense?

Ru : Its empty in it sense of capturing real reality. But, for example, if I make a portrait,
people say that theres little personality in it. They say that. But in a way there is because I
know all of the people I photograph. Maybe the problem is that if in the same way I had
photographed a famous person, it would be a di erent looking picture because we know
another thing about this person.

Pocock: So theyre anonymous . . .

Ru : Theyre anonymous to you.

Pocock: Youre dealing with the absoluteness of the medium, its picture perfectness. Would
you agree with this?

Ru : Photography pretends to show reality. With your technique you have to go as near to
reality as possible in order to imitate reality. And when you come so close then you
recognize that, at the same time, it is not.

Pocock: And what about your relation to the picture?

Ru : Well, maybe I can say its my curiosity that makes me do each one because I want to
see them. And then I go on.

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(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hBqdPD_7M_Y/Sgif8SeRQ3I/AAAAAAAACQQ/463mXcZYJpE/s1600-
h/ru _03h00m35_large.jpg)

Pocock: When I look at one of your portraits, or buildings, its almost as though I can see
more than is actually there.

Ru : But I think that happens because its a picture. Its a frozen picture, nothing moves. If
you stand in front of a building, maybe you turn your head because theres a noise,
something moves, so there is not this concentration. But when a picture is on the wall,
frozen, you get a totally di erent kind of concentration. And with the portraits you cannot
stand in front of him or her and see them as you do in one of my photographs. Thats
impossible.
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Pocock: Its well known that you studied photography with the Bechers. Was that the start?

Ru : At that time I didnt know their work.

I took twenty of my most beautiful slides, landscapes of the Black Forest and holiday
pictures. It was very strange because they accepted me. In the first year I had a brief talk with
Bernd Becher about the slides. He said that they were more or less stupid because those
photographs were not my own photographs but cliches, and they were an indication of the
photographs I had seen in magazines. They were not my own.

Pocock: Have you turned that around on your teachers, like the portraits are clearly related
to standard ID photos?

Ru : Yes, sure. The portraits are definitely a construct based on identification photographs.

Pocock: And the newspaper photographs are not your own?

Ru : I couldnt do all that by myself. It was also important for me that they have already been
printed, that they had been so-called important enough to be worth printing, even if they
are only illustrations for a text. So the photograph itself doesnt tell you anything; its the text
that does. And if I cut o the text, what happens then?

Pocock: What quality do you look for in an news photograph?

Ru : You know, all the newspaper photographs are standard, archetypal, like politicians
shaking hands, or a rocket blasting o , a landscape somewhere. I cant tell you more than
that. I just see it and I know its the right photograph. Not that it good but it makes a point
for my idea.

Pocock: Some quick questions: What do you think of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon?

Ru : I like them.

Pocock: Walker Evans, Eugne Atget?

Ru : In my first years at the academy they were my most important influence. Perhaps
Stephen Shore and William Eggleston were of similar importance to me there as the older
documentary photographers but within color. And I still like looking at them.

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(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hBqdPD_7M_Y/SgigPvW61CI/AAAAAAAACQY/TwpianXuVME/s1600-
h/ru _portrait_large.jpg)

Pocock: How does the American school of the seventies large-format photography di er
form the Dsseldorf school?

Ru : I think its just a di erent landscape. America looks di erent from Europe.

Pocock: Why color in the portraits and not much color anywhere else?

Ru : Color is close to reality. The eye sees in color. Black and white is too abstract for me.

Pocock: Why stars? Do they mean something extra special to you?

Ru : When I was eighteen I had to decide whether to become an astronomer or a

photographer. I also wanted to move the so-called knstlerische Fotografie boundary. Do
you know Flusser?
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you know Flusser?

Pocock: No.

Ru : He defines isolated categories for photography that sometimes cross over. For example,
if medical photography is used in a journalistic way, or with the Stars, a scientific archive
isnt used for scientific research but for my idea of what stars look like. Its also a homage to
Karl Blofeldt. In the twenties he took photographs of plants to explain to his students
architectural archetypes. So he was a researcher but the way he represented his intention
with the help of photography made him an artist. I like these crossovers.

Pocock: What about the buildings you photograph?

Ru : I choose the buildings like the people I photograph. I know them from driving around
and sometimes it makes click. Then I have to go back and see if it is really something, if its
possible to photograph it. I dont look for high architecture but that average style you find in
any suburb of any Western city. Its color, shape, line. Its more geometric.

Pocock: How do you see repetition in your work?

Ru : I wouldnt say repetition, but I would say I work in series. Not to prove to myself that I
was right but Im not satisfied with one picture but maybe with ten or fi een or forty.

Pocock: I feel a certain anxiety when I see the portraits hung in a series. Im reminded of that
game as a kid: What is wrong with this picture?

Ru : Its not Whats wrong? but Its a big puzzle. With one photograph there isnt enough
information. Even I couldnt explain to an extraterrestrial all of mankind with my forty
portraits of my friends. You cannot explain the whole world in one photograph. Photography
pretends. You can see everything thats in front of the camera, but theres always something
beside it.

Pocock: Have you ever done portrait commissions?

Ru : Not so much, but when I did portraits, people came and asked me. At that time
everything was ready for doing portraits so I said, okay, sit in front of the camera.

Pocock: Is it something you tried to avoid?

Ru : In my series of portraits they are all young, Some of those commissions I would never
use for exhibitions.

Pocock: When you show so many portraits all at once, are you trying to convince us of
something?
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something?

Ru : Convince?

Pocock: To persuade us of something about these people?

Ru : Maybe I have to say it di erently. Ive been asked a lot why my portraits never smile.
Why are they so serious? They look so sad and like that. And Ive been thinking about that.
Maybe it has something to do with my generation. Like I use all-over lights, no shadows. We
grew up in the seventies. The reality was that there was no candlelight. If you go through a
place, through the car park, its always fluorescent, so no shadows, just the all-over light.
And in the seventies in Germany we had a so-called Terrorismushysterie: the secret service
surveyed people who were against nuclear power; the government created or invented a so-
called Berufsverbot. This meant le -wing teachers were dismissed, so sometimes it was
better not to tell what you were thinking. All over we have those video cameras, in the
supermarkets, the car park. In big places everywhere youve got those cameras. If you stand
in front of a customs o icer, you try to make a face like the one in your passport. So why
should my portraits be communicative at a time when you could be prosecuted for your
sympathies.

Pocock: This notion of surveillance seems to link nicely with the Night work. How far are you
with this new Surveillance series?

Ru : I started thinking about it at the beginning of last year. I had the idea of combining the
surveillance aspect of the portraits with the darkness of the Stars.

Pocock: Are they all that green and black?

Ru : Yes, I use a light-amplifying lens that is normally installed in tanks or military jets to see
at night. Its another prosthetic use of the medium. If you use a microscope or a telescope
you always see something you cant see with the naked eye.

Pocock: Why is it green?

Ru : Its the authentic color from the phosphorescent screen and if its green, its green.

Pocock: Do you feel that one day youll give up photography for electronic processes?

Ru : Im happy to work again with my own photographs a er being in the studio since 1989
with the Stars and Newspaper photographs. Now I go out at night.

Pocock: They look like pictures of privacy. Are you investigating the idea of privacy?

Ru : The first pictures I made were of backyards. It was January and really cold so I visited
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Ru : The first pictures I made were of backyards. It was January and really cold so I visited
friends and took pictures from their rear windows.

Pocock: Is there a little bit of the voyeur in every photographer?

Ru : These have been done with a device that detectives are starting to use, so they can
work on stealing privacy.

Pocock: To solve crimes?

Ru : Yes, this picture looks as though it could be a scene of a crime.

Pocock: The crime of photography. Is photography itself a crime?

Ru : It can be.

ASX CHANNEL: Thomas Ru

(http://www.americansuburbx.com/channels/t/thomas-ru )
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