Interested in photographic techniques at an early stage, Thomas Ruff began around 2014 to intensify his studies of the visual appearance of the source material of printed analog photography: the “negative.” To visualize the photographic reality and pictorial qualities, he transformed historical photographs into “digital negatives.” In the process, he not only changed the light-dark distribution in the image. The brownish hue of the photographs printed on albumin paper also became a cool, artificial blue tone. The aim of the processing was to highlight the photographic “negative,” which in analog photography was never actually the object of contemplation, but was rather always only a means to an end. In this series, it is treated as an “original” worth viewing, from which a photographic print is made and which, due to digital photography, is in danger of disappearing completely. The series encompasses the entire spectrum of historical black-and-white photography and is divided accordingly into various subgroups.

neg◊artists: artist studios (late 19th century)
neg◊bal / neg◊jap / neg◊zea: ethnographic photographs from Bali, Japan, and New Zealand (late 19th century)
neg◊crime: forensic photographs (1920s/30s)
neg◊dan / neg◊var: dance und vaudeville (1920s/30s)
neg◊india: portraits of princes and chiefs of India (circa 1900)
neg◊kos / neg◊moon: moon and cosmos (second half of the 19th century)
neg◊lal / neg◊pro: Langley Research Center (1950s/60s) / protons (1960s/70s)
neg◊lapresmidi: Vaslav Nijinsky’s ballet L’Apres-midi d’un faune photographed by Adolphe de Meyer (1868–1946) in 1912
neg◊laviniaschulz: Lavinia Schulz (1896-1924) and Walter Holdt (1899-1924) dancing in whole-body masks, photographed by Minya Diez-Dührkoop (1873-1929) in 1924
neg◊lesecq: still lifes by Henri Le Secq (1818–1882), executed in the mid-19th century
neg◊marey: chronophotographic experiments by Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) made in the 1870s
neg◊nud: nude photography from various sources (1920s/30s)
neg◊nus: nude photography by Laryew (Stanislav Walery) (1863–1935) from the 1920s
neg◊plane / neg◊ship: planes and ships (turn of the 19th/20th century)
neg◊por: portraits (first half 20th century)
neg◊stil: still lifes (19th/20th century)
neg◊white: photographs by Clarence Hudson White (1871–1925), circa 1900