Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff is a German photographer who is famous for his passport like portraits. His early portraits were black and white but he soon switched to colour. Using sold backgrounds in different colours the sitter was allowed to choose which colour served as the background. The resulting portraits depict the individual persons – often Ruff’s fellow students framed in a passport like photo. His images are typically shown with emotionless expressions, sometimes face on sometimes profile and infront of a plain background.

When Ruff began taking portraits he was aware of the era at the end 20th century. He saw how everything seemed bright and illuminated. It was an era of surveillance cameras and being watched all the time. His idea for the portraits was to use even light in combination with a large format camera, so that you could see everything about the sitters face. He also didn't want the sitters to show any emotion, he told them to look at the camera with self confidence. Ruff wanted his portraits to act as an official portrait of his generation. He wanted his photos to look like those in passports but without any other information. 

This type of portraiture has made me think about why I am taking my photographs and how I want to portray them as a series. As all my models are students and from different backgrounds I want to focus more of the diversity of my models compared to how models are supposed to look by societies standards.