Thomas Ruff

For a starting point I wanted to look at photographers who take portrait photos that are very straight on and don’t seem to be aiming to do anything surprising. With this in mind I came across the photography Thomas Ruff whose work I had seen before but not his portrait work. The two images below, to me a very straight forward, eye contact with the camera, almost passport style when it comes to the framing, basic makeup, hair and attire and therefore extremely basic portraits. Even with me saying this I like them, it’s good to see work that’s not trying to be provoke a shock value, especially when looking at some other Ruff pieces of work. I always find something surprisingly special about a set of portraits that all look the same and are all ‘passport portraits’ even though I normally enjoy a more distracting photo. In connection to my own work this is got to be the starting point, just experimenting with making the target being very straight and nothing over the top, with all of my work going to be in post production I’m going to need my Raw photos to be easier to edit with strong lighting and lots of detail. Thinking about it I’m also going to need to pay attention to the people’s hairstyle and possibly clothing as I’m going to need both of these things not to be distracting, or maybe it will play well to what I want to achieve. We will have to see.



'The Portrait, Photography as a Stage'