Zeitungsfoto 071, Sterne 22h 24m / -20, 2002

In this diptych edition, Thomas Ruff combines two motifs from outer space. The left-hand image stems from his newspaper photographs series, a project in which Ruff collected and reprinted press images from German-language newspapers. Removed from their original context and enlarged to double-column width, these everyday visuals – once chosen for editorial, not aesthetic reasons – become enigmatic fragments of a collective visual memory. The right-hand image comes from the Stars series, for which Ruff worked with archival negatives from the European Southern Observatory. Rather than photographing the night sky himself, he appropriated scientific data to create stark, minimal compositions of stars, nebulae, and galactic formations. Though both images depict outer space, they reflect very different visual systems – one shaped by mass media and the circulation of images on Earth, the other by scientific observation and data from deep space.