This series, titled after the initials of the modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), began as a commission by the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, whose curator Julian Heynen asked Ruff to photograph the renovation of van der Rohe’s Haus Lange and Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany. Faced with the challenge of discovering a new way to capture the familiar and widely documented buildings, Ruff employed digital imaging techniques to both emphasize and obscure characteristic traits of the modernist monuments. In some works, motion blur highlights how the architect played with the boundaries of inside and outside; others use artificial color as a response to the restrained purity of the modernist style. Ruff also photographed van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic and the reconstructed Barcelona Pavilion in Barcelona, Spain. At times faced with conditions unsuitable for photographing on-site, Ruff made use of archival imagery for some works, subjecting the original photographs to evident digital manipulation. Reflecting the artist’s broader oeuvre, the l.m.v.d.r series does not aim to record the physical reality of the historic buildings, but rather emphasizes their presence as images: visual constructs that do not have a straightforward relationship to the objects they depict.
