Copies, Codes, Patterns - E-resources

Can you still tell which one is the real world?

We are now living in a virtual world, in a world of technology, in an “unreal” world. We can create fake identities on the web or be who ever we want to be. We can create what character we want or we can communicate with each other even though one person is here and one on the other side of the earth. We have that power; we have the power to know everything and everything its just one click away.
Copies, codes and patterns are all over the place. Everywhere you look there is a pattern created, from the nature to the ones made by people. We are influenced by all the things around us and other people’s work. When I moved here, in England I realized there is a pattern when it comes to the houses and buildings, and I had my first project “Environment” about that. They all look the same, it depends on the area they are in but they all look the same. You struggle in finding your house at first because of that, but you need to find that one detail that makes it unique.

Thomas Ruff is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf. All of his portraits are in a pattern, shown with emotionless expressions, sometimes face-on, sometimes in profile, and in front of a plain background.



Thomas Ruff (born 1958)
Blue Eyes M.V./B.E; Blue Eyes M.B./B.E.; Blue Eyes L.C./B.E.; Blue Eyes C.F./B.E.
1991
C-type prints
Museum nos. E.96 to 99-2009
Given from the private collection of Michael and Fiona King, London, in loving memory of Rosina and John Palmer. Images Courtesy of David Zwirner, New York

Photo and description from : http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/5017

Ruff is part of a leading group of contemporary German photographers trained at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. The group is known for a disciplined approach that explores - and questions - the objectivity of photography. The consistent and dispassionate style in this series of portraits resembles that of a mugshot or passport photograph. But Ruff replaced the natural eyes of his sitters with the same set of bright blue irises, thereby undermining the photographs’ truthfulness as records.

We try to discover different shapes in nature like known human faces or interpret them on window stains, hear random voices in sounds generated by electronic devices; we try to find a certain pattern in everything we do.