Häuser (Houses), 1989

For this edition, Thomas Ruff selected five images from his Häuser (Houses) series – a group of works in which the artist turned his lens toward the anonymous postwar architecture of suburban Düsseldorf. Captured between January and March in the early morning light, the buildings are presented against a flat, gray sky – creating a neutral, almost abstract backdrop. The chosen subjects, mostly apartment blocks and institutional buildings from the 1950s to 1970s, reflect a period of functional, understated urban design. Drawing from the sober aesthetic of Bauhaus and mid-century architectural photography, Ruff emphasizes the formal qualities of these everyday structures while stripping them of narrative or human presence. In a few cases, minimal retouching was applied to achieve compositional clarity. With Häuser (Houses), Ruff applies his portrait-like precision to architecture, offering a cool, distant reflection on the built environment and its role in shaping collective memory.