The Dusseldorf School is renowned around the world, and is today synonymous with high artistic standards and a highly diverse and new approach to the medium of photography. There has been no other art movement since the Bauhaus to possess such a worldwide appeal. This volume traces its ascendancy from the mid-1970s.

Now reissued in an attractively priced, compact edition, this classic and authoritative survey is the first detailed account of a seminal era in photographic history. Inspired and guided by Bernd and Hiller Becher, themselves pioneers in the area of documentary photography, the artists of Germany’s Düsseldorf School not only pushed the boundaries of their teachers’ practice, but also ushered in three generations of technical and compositional achievement that is rivalled in importance only by the arrival of color photography. This book introduces readers to the historic, cultural, and scientific environments in which the Bechers’ practice thrived. It explores the teaching philosophies with which they encouraged their students, and considers the qualities that highlight the Düsseldorf School: intricate detail, large scale, painterly distance combined with an immersive quality. The plate section, organized by artist, features 160 beautifully reproduced images by Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Laurenz Berges, Elger Esser, Simone Nieweg, Jörg Sasse, and Petra Wunderlich.

Over the course of his three-decade career, Thomas Ruff has taken up many approaches to photography in his investigation into the status of the image in contemporary culture. In Thomas Ruff, the artist presents new work that continues his ongoing probe into the history, processes, techniques, and technology of photography. One of the most influential photographers working today, Ruff has redefined photography’s conceptual possibilities, simultaneously capturing and challenging the essence of the medium as a means for visual experience. He has investigated various photographic genres, including portraiture, the nude, and landscape and architectural photography, using both analog and digital technologies, and culling imagery from scientific archives, print media, and the internet. Presented here is a selection of Ruff’s most well-known works, as well as the newer Tripe/Ruff series, begun in 2018, which draws on negatives of India and Burma taken in the 1850s by an officer in the East India Company army. Also included is a conversation between Ruff and Okwui Enwezor, which took place at Haus der Kunst in Munich, in connection with the artist’s retrospective then on view. The conversation, published here for the first time, has been edited for this volume and examines Ruff’s artistic practice and inspiration, serving as an engaging and dynamic introduction to the artist. Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, in 2019, Thomas Ruff is available in both English-only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

In Digital Image Systems, Claus Gunti examines the antagonizing reactions to digital technologies in photography. While Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky and Jörg Sasse have gradually adopted digital imaging tools in the early 1990s, other photographers from the Düsseldorf School have remained faithful to film-based technologies. By evaluating the aesthetic and discursive preconditions of this situation and by extensively analyzing the digital work of these three photographers, this book shows that the digital turn in photography was anticipated by the conceptualization of images within systems, and thus offers new perspectives for understanding the »digital revolution«.

Thomas Ruff is among the most important international photographers to emerge in the last fifteen years, and one of the most enigmatic and prolific of Bernd and Hilla Bechers former students, a group that includes Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer, and Axel Hutte. In 2007, Ruff completed his monumental Jpegs series in which he explores the distribution and reception of images in the digital age. Starting with images he culls primarily from the Web, Ruff enlarges them to a gigantic scale, which exaggerates the pixel patterns until they become sublime geometric displays of color. Many of Ruffs works in the series focus on idyllic, seemingly untouched landscapes, and conversely, scenes of war and nature disturbed by human manipulation. Taken together, these masterworks create an encyclopedic compendium of contemporary visual culture that also actively engages the history of landscape painting. A fittingly deluxe and oversized volume, Jpegs is the first monograph dedicated exclusively to the publication of Ruffs remarkable series.

Exhibition held at the National Gallery (U.S.), Washington, D.C., September 30, 2016-March 5, 2017, of a private collection of thirty-five works gathered by Meyerhoff and Becker produced by nineteen artists.

Edited and text by Stefan Gronert.

Following the huge success of Swimming Pool, Mária returns with a new collection of her photography in a limited edition book.

A new ed. of Struth's "Museum photographs", adding 26 additional images which include pictures of artworks at their original locations.

Thomas Ruff is acknowledged as a leading innovator in the generation of German artists that propelled photography into mainstream art. For more than two decades, he has pushed the limits of the photographic medium, harnessing technologies both old and new. Traditionally, photograms are made by placing objects onto photosensitive paper and exposing the paper to light, thereby recording the silhouettes of the objects. Captivated by this method but seeking to work beyond its limitations, Ruff collaborated with a 3-D imaging expert to design a virtual darkroom that would enable him to experiment with an infinite range of forms.Negatives are a direct result of Ruff’s photogram process; the white and slate-blue images are inverted versions of early-twentieth-century nude studies.