in online exhibition Thomas Ruff and Jörg Schellmann – 35 Years
Zeitungsphotos, 1991
Portfolio of 24 offset/silkscreen prints, 50 x 40 cm (19½ x 16 in) each. Edition of 36, signed and numbered on verso on five prints of the portfolio.
This edition portfolio of 24 prints forms part of Thomas Ruff’s Zeitungsfotos (newspaper photographs) series. Sourced from German-language newspapers, the images span politics, culture, science, war, celebrity, and everyday life – reflecting the collective visual memory of a specific era. Originally chosen by editors to illustrate the news rather than for artistic value, Ruff recontextualizes these found photographs by isolating them from text and enlarging them to double-column width. Presented without captions or context, the images lose their journalistic function and become ambiguous, free-floating fragments. Ruff’s intervention shifts the viewer’s attention to surface, tone, and composition – questioning how we read and assign meaning to media imagery in an age defined by visual saturation.
