For this series, Ruff acquired an archive of glass negatives from a 1930s machine and tool manufacturing company. The photographs had been intended for a sales catalogue in which large machines would be illustrated next to the tools they produced. The archive meticulously documents the different stages involved in preparing the products for the catalogue. Caroline Flosdorff notes of the series: “The reconstruction of the individual processes of the old produce photographs [is what] interests Ruff... Working at the computer screen, Ruff proceeds like a detective to reconstruct the individual steps of producing the catalogue. It becomes evident that his photographic models made use of many other alterations, in addition to manual means, to free the motifs from their context: retouching produced polished shiny places on the metal; less important machine parts were removed entirely.”1
Ultimately, the photographs used for the sales catalogue occupy their own hybrid genre of photography and painting. As such, they relate to Ruff’s broader exploration of the complex relationship between the photographic image and its referent. The works in his series not only reveal the often cumbersome analog techniques involved in creating the desired images for the manufacturing company, but add a digital equivalent, with Ruff seamlessly manipulating the color in pursuit of his own pictorial idea.
1 Caroline Flosdorff, “Machines for the Kestnerhalle,” in Thomas Ruff: Machines/Maschinen. Exh. cat. (Hannover: Kestner Gesellschaft, 2003), p. 13.
