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Jpegs: Thomas Ruff and the horror of digital photography
- Source: Philosophy of Photography, Volume 12, Issue 1-2, Oct 2021, p. 93 - 109
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- 21 Jul 2021
- 31 Jan 2022
- 24 Jan 2023
Abstract
This article analyses the aesthetics of digital compression as revealed in Thomas Ruff’s Jpegs series of photographs (2004–07). These images exhibit a poor standard of digital picture resolution fixed as large-scale, high-quality, lustrous C-type photographic prints. With reference to Vilém Flusser’s writing on photography, I argue that Ruff’s work discloses a ‘horror of digital photography’: a system of automated representation, which inverts our relationship to the photographic image.
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