This series, Zeitungsfotos (Newspaper Photographs), was prompted by a fundamental question Ruff asked himself while a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf: How do we process visual information? And how and when does that information become significant? Ruff had collected newspaper images since the early 1980s and selected 400 of them for this series. Printed across the space of two columns rather than one, the enlarged re-photographs are presented without captions and further context: the only given is Ruff’s selection of the image. By asking viewers to approach the visual information on its own, the artist draws attention to the constructed and subjective nature of any photograph.
