Portraits, 1989

This early edition accompanied Thomas Ruff’s seminal Portraits series, a body of work that redefined contemporary portrait photography in the 1980s. Rejecting psychological interpretation and expressive gesture, Ruff opted instead for a neutral, almost passport-like format: direct gaze, even lighting, plain backgrounds. His subjects – friends, classmates, and acquaintances – are photographed with quiet intensity, wearing everyday clothes and maintaining a calm, unsmiling demeanor. By treating each face with the same objective precision, Ruff draws attention to surface, structure, and the limitations of photographic representation itself. The result is a typology of faces that is at once deeply personal and resolutely impersonal – inviting viewers to consider how identity is constructed and perceived through the photographic image.