Nudes

Hardcover | First edition | 160 pages

Published by Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2003.

Thomas Ruff: Nudes pulls low-resolution images from internet pornographic thumbnail galleries and reworks them into large-scale, digitally manipulated prints. Colours are shifted, bodies blurred, forms distorted. In stripping the imagery of clarity, Ruff reframes it—moving it away from titillation and into a study of mediation, surface, and digital desire.

A graduate of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Düsseldorf masterclass, Ruff first gained recognition in the 1980s with formal portraits and images of starry skies. In Nudes, his approach is colder, more abstract—pornographic content is rendered ambiguous, repetitive, and detached, underscoring the isolation and disembodiment inherent in digital consumption.

The book includes a short story by Michel Houellebecq, echoing the atmosphere of Ruff’s images, recalling sex clubs, anonymous bodies, and tactile excess—a narrative submerged in surface and sensation. Together, they offer a clinical yet oddly sensual view of intimacy refracted through screens.

Condition: good (wear to dust cover including small tear to back cover)