Thomas Ruff

Accompanying a major retrospective survey, this definitive monograph explores themes throughout the work of one of the greatest artists using photography in the twenty-first century.

Since the late 1970s the German artist Thomas Ruff has approached every genre of photography and coolly reinvented it. Coming of age alongside Andreas Gursky, Candida Hoffer and Thomas Struth in what was to become known as the Düsseldorf School, Ruff's work explores the technologies of the camera and image production – from satellite cameras to digital lenses, from the analogue negative to the JPEG – to reflect on the picturing of our built environment, current affairs, pornography, disaster, the cosmos, exhibition making – and unlock what images tell us about modernity.

This publication features a revelatory anthology of writings selected by the artist that give insights into his oeuvre, illustrated here with a chronology of his most important series. Curator and writer Iwona Blazwick; photography historian David Campany; curator Cameron Foote; art historian of modernism Sarah E. James; and curator and expert on the archive Nayia Yiakoumaki, all contribute new perspectives.

Edited and with an essay by Iwona Blazwick. With essays by David Campany, Cameron Foote and Sarah E. James.

The catalogue is published with four alternative covers.