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The Horror of Digital Photography

What is it about?

The contemporary artist Thomas Ruff's JPEG series of photographs (2004-07) comprises large scale glossy prints of poor quality, magnified, and heavily pixelated images. They foreground the effects of digital compression rather than the content of the image. This paper analyses what these artworks tell us about digital photography, where the closer we look, the less we get to see.

Why is it important?

We are living in an age of accelerated photography. Every smartphone is a 'camera'. Everyone with a smartphone is now a 'photographer'. However, we tend to understand photography in its digital form according to theories established in relation to analogue photography. Thomas Ruff's work reveals the incompatibility of traditional theorisations of photography today, when the photographic image is constructed through hidden algorithmic processes.

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The following have contributed to this page:
Ian Rothwell
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