Andere Doppelporträts, 1996

For this edition, Thomas Ruff placed two slightly different versions of the same portrait from his series Other Portraits next to each other to create a double. With this series, Ruff expanded his long-standing engagement with portrait photography by combining two faces into a single composite image. Created using a Minolta Montage Unit – an optical device once employed by German police in the 1970s to generate identikit images – these works merge elements from different portraits into a hybrid likeness. Unlike Ruff’s earlier, neutral single portraits that emphasized surface over expression, these double portraits introduce a constructed identity: plausible but fictitious. Rather than manipulating the images digitally or through darkroom techniques, Ruff creates these new faces entirely in-camera. With Andere Doppelporträts (Other Double Portraits), Ruff continues his inquiry into the boundaries between photographic truth, perception, and invention – interrogating not only how we read faces, but how photographic tools shape what we see.