Portrait (V. Levchenya)
Portrait (V. Levchenya), 2000
by Thomas Ruff (b.1958)
Ruff âs works are controversial and have often been dismissed by art critics as nothing more than overblown passport photographs, conveying nothing of the personality or character of the sitters.
Their blandness however is deliberate. Ruff believes that the photograph is only able to depict the surface of things and he explores this obsessively in his work.
Working in vast series made over years at a time, his photographs are most often based on friends, or his students, as here. He photographs the faces as he finds them, in a straightforward way with no attempt to surprise, intrigue, disguise, or provide the viewer with anything other than studied neutrality.
âPortrait (V. Levchenya)â, is part of a series Ruff started in 1998, intentionally imitating the passport-style approach of a famous body of work he began in 1981.
In addition to their serial character his photographs are extremely precise. We feel able to identify with the work in an immediate way as a passport-style image, stripped of all irrelevant details. In this way the portrait appears to be very real and familiar. Despite this however, there seems to be a barrier between us and the sitter as we are unable to identify with him. We perceive the face as a meaningless façade.
Cibachrome print
Purchased through the Contemporary Art Society Special Collection Scheme with Lottery funding from the Arts Council England, 2004
