Thomas Ruff Inspirational Quotes (10)

My images are not images of reality, but show a kind of second reality, the image of the image.

The people have to know what my portraits are like in order to behave in such a way that the result is one of my portraits.

In photography, you always have both the medium and the depicted subject at the same time.

I think it is an anarchistic idea to have information on the front and the back. Normally if you add information to information, you have more information.

I received my training at an art academy, so what I produce is art. That's what is artistic about my photographs.

I believe that photography can only reproduce the surface of things. The same applies to a portrait. I take photographs of people the same way I would take photographs of a plaster bust.

Normally if you add information to information, you have more information. In case of my art, I destroy information, I would say, because the image is disturbed by the writings. In a way, they become pure imagery. For me it's really fun because it's an idealistic approach to images, to just play around with information and see what's happening.

You cannot explain the whole world in one photograph. Photography pretends. You can see everything that's in front of the camera, but there's always something beside it.

I'm very old fashioned. I still believe in the image and the pictorial quality of the image. It seems that I'm still busy with a truth in photography.

If you look at photographers who say, I hate digital photography, they all use Photoshop, even if it's to make the sky just a little more blue than it was. Manipulation is very discrete and because it's so discrete nobody cares about it anymore. People accept manipulated photographs, I think.