For the Whitechapel Gallery, Thomas Ruff has created a new work from his flower.s series, on the occasion of the gallery’s 125th Anniversary.
In flower.s, Ruff continues his exploration of the history of the photographic medium, revisiting an analogue technique known as pseudo-solarization, or the Sabattier effect. Originally discovered by chance, this technique involves exposing photographic film to a diffuse secondary light in the darkroom, thereby partially inverting the light and dark areas of an image. Popular with Surrealist artists such as Man Ray and Lee Miller, Ruff transports the technique to the realm of digital imaging. First, he made flower arrangements on a lightbox, photographed them, and uploaded the digital files to a virtual darkroom on his computer. Applying an equivalent of the Sabattier effect, he then superimposed the positive and negative areas and printed the final images on aged paper. Similar to the 'Photograms', he uses contemporary means to reference an “old” photographic technique and shifts the boundaries of its possibilities. Unlike the analogue process, which invariably involves an element of chance, the artist here had complete control over the outcome.