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.
Thomas RuffI 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.
Thomas RuffIn photography, you always have both the medium and the depicted subject at the same time.
Thomas RuffPress information is serious information, but press information is also manipulated by people who want you to think that this and that happened. So it's the old thing that you still cannot trust photography at all or you have to know who is distributing the photograph. In terms of cell phone photography, I think nobody cares about a photograph anymore because they're taking so many pictures just for fun.
Thomas RuffIf 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.
Thomas RuffNormally 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.
Thomas Ruff