In Thomas Ruff's latest series “Negatives” he revisits the 19th century origins of photography. Their distinctive blue auras reference the cyanotype process, which was invented in 1827 as a technique for producing photographic images.
For this series Thomas Ruff acquired 19th century photographs like artists' studios or female nudes. He scanned these photographs, digitally inverted the colour scale and compiled a printout in proportion to the size of the original negative. The direct colour inversion of a brownish positive generated the characteristic bluish hue, which resembled a cyanotype. With Negatives Ruff is addressing diverse aspects of media science and art history.
