SHADOWPLAY Magazine, interview with Eloise Hendy
2024
When Thomas Ruff started studying at the Kunstakademie Düssel- dorf, under the tutelage of German photographer Bernd Becher, he was shocked. He thought Becher's photos were "the most boring industrial photographs" he'd ever seen. It was 1977, Ruff was in his late teens, and dreaming of becoming a photographer for a maga- zine like GEO or National Geographic. "My favourite photographers, at that time, they made the most beautiful photographs," Ruff tells me over a video link from his studio. "So, I started dreaming of also travelling with my camera, shooting beautiful landscapes, beautiful people." He applied to the Kunstakademie with a selection of photos similar to those "beautiful photographs" in his favourite magazines. "I did not care about the history of photography, I was not interested in it," he says casually, taking a drag on a cigarette. Of course, this was all about to change. "When I started with Bernd Becher, pretty soon I had to realise that all the photographs I shot as an amateur were kitsch," Ruff says. "They were not my original, own work. They looked pretty good, I must confess," he adds with a conspiratorial grin. "But they were still imitations of those images that I admired." Becher's me- thods came to look less boring; "I had to realise that, okay, he's right."