A formula can be defined as a method, statement, or procedure for achieving a joint aim or principle.[1] The works of Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff undergo a congruous method or process of production, proposing a formula for art. Their work proposes a ‘formula for art’ through the rigour of a predetermined process or method, which applied to a photographic practice, will produce a similar outcome, yet a different finished product, varied by individual choices of subject matter and style. The term formula to describe their methodological approach to photography is appropriate, as it recalls a scientific technique. Gursky, Struth and Ruff’s works embody the deadpan aesthetic. They are formulaic in their objective approach, their study of landscape and architecture, and the final aim of exhibiting the work in a gallery; thereby adhering to certain qualities of finish and scale.[2] All three studied under the tutelage of Bernd Becher at the Dusseldorf Academy, where they were instilled with a neutral and objective approach to photography.[3] They began working around 1980, and became popular in the 1990s, during the political and cultural climate of globalisation and the commodification of objects, including artworks, and increasingly photographs.[4] The use of large-scale prints, conceptual precision, and the clarity and glossiness of the photographs, preconditioned their reception for a gallery space. Their photographs propelled photography into the art world, and onto the walls of galleries. The lack of visual triggers and psychological invitation within the images, consequently instructs the viewer to become conscious of the act of looking at a photograph, and assigns the role of the viewer to participating observer. [5]
The work of all three artists can be classed as collections of typologies, where each type can be compared with one another, revealing both similarities and differences through juxtaposition.[6] Each artist works with different types of subject matter, Ruff collects faces, Struth documents urban spaces, and Gursky assembles crowds. All three photographers apply a formula to their photographic process that produces a corresponding aesthetic and function, yet warrants unique outcomes, diversified through individual choices of subject matter and variations of technique and focus.
Gursky, Struth and Ruff studied under the tutelage of Bernd Becher, at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf, Germany. The photography and teaching practices of Bernd and Hilla Becher (Hilla was not an official tutor at the Kunstakadamie but collaborated with Bernd in an artistic and instructive role) were highly influential in remodelling photographic education, transcending the notion of photography as a vocational skill, embodied in the practice of photojournalism. The Becher’s unleashed photography into the realm of art practice; arming their students with the confidence to regard their photographs as artworks and of belonging to the gallery space. In 1957 Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing pre-Nazi industrial architecture (Fig. 1). Their approach was systematic and encyclopaedic, devoid of individual perspective. They photographed water towers, gas tanks and mine heads: from the same perspective, in similar light and weather conditions and from side or frontal elevations. The process of continuously collecting photographs of similar buildings formed their work into a typology.[7] This systematic approach to photography is somewhat of a ‘Germanic’ tradition, founding the basis of the New Objectivity photography of the 1920s and 1930s, characterised by the work of Albert Renger-Patsch, August Sander (Fig. 2) and Erwin Blumenfeld. They photographed single subjects, collecting typologies of people, nature, architecture and the landscape.[8] The ‘Germanic’ tradition sees photographers depicting classes or types of subject matter, following a typographical formula.
The typological approach prevalent in the work of the Bechers, and later Gursky, Struth and Ruff enact a process of preservation: a construction against loss. For the Bechers, their focus on pre-Nazi architecture was a way of preserving a pre-Nazi Germany and thus reconstructing their own historical narrative, free from fascist regimes. In the work of Gursky, Struth and Ruff, the process of archiving allows a comparison of the differences between objects or buildings that initially appear similar. This focus on difference runs counter to the tendencies of the homogenising globalised age they inhabited. The typological accumulation and comparison reveals the ideology behind the subject that is being photographed, and provides the viewer with the means to understanding the depicted structures or landscapes, and their specific historical condition and future implications.[9]
Typological photography is defined by its absence of style and adherence to objectivity. It is a rejection of “subjective photography”, the “snapshot aesthetic”, and staged photography.[10] The typographical approach counteracts the notion that photography is a collection of “decisive moments”; instead it is an archive or a series of similar images. The collection provides a framework for the understanding of each photograph.[11] The formula of the series minimises authorial projection; enhanced by the passivity of the composition and the comparative method of display, the truth-value of the photograph is diminished, placing the viewer in an active, critical role.[12] The repetition of formal qualities, subject matter, and compositions focuses the viewer’s attention toward the subject of the picture and the method of production. [13] Gursky, Struth and Ruff all use medium or large format cameras, work in colour and place their cameras frontally and statically.[14] The formula of the photographic practice is thus more important than the authorial role of the photographer.[15]
The early work of Gursky, Struth and Ruff sticks to the methodology taught by the Bechers. The Bechers teaching programme followed a strict predetermined formula. They encouraged their students to pick a subject that they would focus on, preferably a class of architecture, or something social rather than the natural. Students were then directed in choosing a uniform style of picture-making. They were to focus on producing fixed, consistent compositions, in order to reduce contingency and the presence of the photographer. A typology was then created through the continuous photographing of individual examples of the same subject. Students were encouraged to work on one subject for a number of years before moving onto another subject.[16]
Ruff used the Bechers’ typological format to push the limits of portraiture (Fig. 3). He began taking passport-style portraits of his peers around 1980. He asked his sitters to face the camera and remain expressionless. He built up a collection of these portraits, forming a typology. Ruff’s portraits confounded the viewer’s expectations of a portrait, providing the viewer with nothing of the sitter’s personality or psychology, as opposed to the traditional function of a portrait. By discarding recognisable visual triggers, the viewer is not distracted by aesthetics, instead concentrating their attention to the process of looking. [17]
Struth shares Ruff’s interest in classification. He began photographing city streets (Fig. 4), placing his medium-format camera in the middle of the street, and shooting.[18] This detached approach that emerges from Struth’s collection of like-images; means his photographs are not images that we become psychologically immersed in. Instead, the deadpan candour invites us to engage with the process of representation, and to scrutinise composition and method.[19] Ruff and Struth’s works strictly follow the conceptual imperative of the Bechers tutelage, their works remain faithfully within the series format, and their initial pretext or concepts are rigorously implemented to restrict the range of pictorial outcomes.[20]
Gursky’s early work also consisted of employing the typological method to photograph the interiors of bars and restaurants, sales assistants and security officers. When he had exhausted these subjects his work became distant from the Bechers. He no longer works in series; instead he works in themes, his entire body of work forming a connected framework, but each photograph remaining autonomous.[21]
Ruff, Struth and Gursky applied an objective approach to their photography, following the Bechers tutelage, in order to reduce the instructive power of the photograph and allow the viewer the active role. Their interest is rooted in the process of taking a photograph, the nature of the medium and its effect on the subject and viewer. They interrogate the practice of photography. Over time, each artist’s work developed beyond the Bechers formula, taking certain aspects, but establishing individual variants on the formulaic approach to photography. Their work departed from the Bechers aesthetic through the introduction of colour, and the increased scale of the prints. Their approach was overall more flexible, breaking with strict frontal viewpoints and experimenting with digital imaging manipulation. The Bechers established a doctrine, from which they generated an evolving formula inherent to their three bodies of work. Like juxtapositions that become apparent in typologies, each artist’s different maverick styles emerge in comparison with each other’s work.[22]
Gursky began working with large prints in the 1980s, pushing the limits of the printing process (Fig. 5). His work is synonymous with scale. Gursky’s work has qualities of commercial advertising photography, with its maximum clarity and strong impact. He works with traditional and new technologies, using a large format camera and later digital imaging technologies to refine the image. Gursky photographs from a raised and distanced vantage point, separating the viewer from the scene depicted, to place them in the role of detached, critical observers. Gursky’s photographs of landscapes, or sites of industry, commerce or leisure are images of the crowd, not part of the crowd. Gursky substitutes the monocular vision of the world; he makes no attempt at the traditional role or skill of photography to simulate human vision.[23] Even his photographs that place us at a human height feel unusual (Fig. 6); the use of flat, clinical light, and often constructed or manipulated sets make us uneasy and aware of the act of looking.[24]
Struth soon abandoned the use of a fixed-viewpoint to coincide with the complexities of the urban space.[25] Struth’s use of varied viewpoints can be seen in his images of galleries and their visitors (Fig. 7), which all depict artworks on walls and the gallery visitors in front of them, but he has chosen varied angles, depending on their ability to provide the viewer with a self-conscious look at their behaviour.[26] Through his monochromatic palette and formulaic compositions, Struth attempts to conflate time and distil the scene into a contemplative viewing experience, thus inciting reflection in the viewer.[27] Unlike the Bechers and Ruff, Struth never excises the object or person from its context, instead depicting the relationships between people and space, and the complex social network in which we live.[28]
Ruff continues to work with series, predetermining the pictorial outcome of his work. Ruff’s mechanical application of a type onto his portraits emphasises sameness rather than difference. Any physiognomic distinctions are reduced through the robotic photographic process, the flat lighting and the frontal perspective. Ruff has achieved making the particular, general. The viewer is confronted only with the surface qualities of the painting, focusing the viewers’ attention on the process of photography instead of aesthetic nuances.[29]
In his later series of the 2000s, Nudes (Fig. 8), Ruff downloads images from Internet porn sites, enlarges them and digitally enhances the pixilation. These photographs take on a painterly quality: through pleasant tonal ranges and blurring that mimics brushstrokes. This series highlights the ability of idealisation to present any subject as aesthetically enjoyable, revealing the subjective process of representation. The appropriation of images from the Internet diminishes the determining role of the artist, thus leaving the viewer with the power to determine how to read the photograph.[30] Gursky, Ruff and Struth have developed bodies of work with individual, maverick flairs. However all three artists’ work is defined by highlighting the process of taking a photograph and the act of looking.
The development of a formula for art, initiated in the work of the Bechers, Gursky, Struth and Ruff, was in opposition to the nature of documentary photography. As a documentary photographer you had no fixed frame of reference, and no fixed position within either the art or commercial worlds. The formulaic approach to photography generates a language for photography, so that it can be understood within an artistic framework. The influences, processes, aims, subjects, techniques, styles and means of display are repeated and part of a formula, constructing photography as an art form with its own art historical discourse, and investing photography with artistic significance.[31]
The typological photography of the Bechers was assimilated into the genre of minimal and conceptual art, with its focus on the series, predetermined concepts and the decreased importance of aesthetics and authorship. However, they were not considered photographers. The late 1980s saw resurgence in conceptual art’s interest in the art object and not just the idea or process, so the photographic object became relevant.[32] The 1990s saw the peak in popularity of the deadpan aesthetic. The large scale and glossy aesthetic of these photographs suited the gallery space. The deadpan subject matter of industrial architecture and our relationship with it matched the spaces where these works were being shown, making a pertinent comment on the act of looking within the typical industrial art gallery. Photographs also provided a welcome change from the heavy 1980s focus on painting and subjective art making.[33] The climate was set for photography to move into the gallery.
The refuting of the truth quality of photography and the removal of individual perspective in Gursky, Struth and Ruff’s works was fundamental in its acceptance in the art world. People were accustomed to absorbing manipulative images, being continuously bombarded with commercial photography and advertising that was loaded with visual symbols and interpretive control. The objective quality of the deadpan aesthetic and the removal of manipulation confounded the traditional process of viewing. The viewer is free from the subjectivity of the image’s creator, and thus in control of the image’s interpretation. The formula applied to the process of each of these photographers’ work, determines the final outcome and aim- to achieve a neutral aesthetic and activate the viewer- thus also establishing a formula for display. The aim is to engage the viewer in the act of looking at a photograph, to think critically about what is being depicted, and what we expect of pictorial representations. This active form of viewing suits a gallery environment, particularly in a postmodern context, where a gallery is seen as a place to engage critically with representations, in order scrutinize the political, cultural and social context of the image.[34]
Gursky, Ruff and Struth push the Bechers proposed formula to its limits, and thus consequently question the limits of photography. [35] The formula is employed as a reference or a source from which to negotiate subjectivity, redefine the medium of photography and manifest photography as a viable art form.[36] A working method ties the artists together, but their choice of subject matter differentiates them. The typological format means their works are linked structurally rather then by theme or style. They propose a critical role for photography, placing the viewer in an active role and questioning the truth-value of photography. The exhibition space is the ideal place for the contemplative observation incited by their works.
The work of Gursky, Struth and Ruff propose a formula for art. They propose a meticulous approach to the process of photographing: working in series or themes, employing frontal viewpoints, and focusing on capturing detail and clarity through framing and the use of medium and large-format cameras. The methodological formula reveals individual mannerisms and idiosyncrasies in the final product. However, the effect of the final image is consistent in reducing the authorial role to focus on the act of photographing and looking, instating a formula for the reception of the photograph. Through the utilising of passive methods of description, all three artists employ a defining characteristic of the medium of photography. By disclosing the production and process of image-making to the viewer- through the adoption of seriality, strict compositions and comparisons of like images- the autonomy and veracity of photography is renounced. Gursky, Struth and Ruff revel in the ritual nature of photography, and its epistemological role. Gursky, Struth and Ruff have dissected the photographic genre, through a clinical procedure of enlargement, enhancement and displacement, thus defining representation’s limiting conditions.
[1] Catherine Schwarz, ed., The Chambers Dictionary (Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 1993), 656.
[2] Charlotte Cotton, “Chapter 3: Deapan,” in The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Charlotte Cotton (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), 81-2.
[3] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 82.
[4] Ibid., 81-2.
[5] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 81-2.
[6] Marc Friedus, “Introduction,” in Typologies: 9 Contemporary Photographers, exhibition catalogue, ed. Marc Friedus (Newport Beach, California: Newport Harbour Art Museum, 1991), 10.
[7] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 82-3.
[8] Ibid., 82.
[9] Friedus, “Introduction,” 15.
[10] James Lingwood, “Working the System,” in Typologies: 9 Contemporary Photographers, exhibition catalogue, ed. Marc Friedus (Newport Beach, California: Newport Harbour Art Museum, 1991), 90.
[11] Friedus, “Introduction,” 12.
[12] Ibid., 11.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 81-112.
[15] Friedus, “Introduction,” 11.
[16] Peter Galassi, “Gursky’s World,” in Andreas Gursky, Peter Galassi (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2000), 8.
[17] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 105-6.
[18] Galassi, “Gursky’s World,” 10.
[19] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 97.
[20] Ibid., 105-6.
[21] Galassi, “Gursky’s World,” 11.
[22] Ian Jeffrey, “A Formula for Art,” Photoworks 7 (November-April 2006/7): 4.
[23] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 83-4.
[24] Ibid., 85.
[25] Lingwood, “Working the System,” 94.
[26] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 97.
[27] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 97.
[28] Lingwood, “Working the System,” 95.
[29] Ibid., 94.
[30] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 213-4.
[31] Galassi, “Gursky’s World,” 10.
[32] Lingwood, “Working the System,” 93.
[33] Cotton, “Deadpan,” 81-2.
[34] Michael Collins, “The Long Look: Michael Collins on Bernd and Hilla Becher,” Tate Magazine, Issue 1 (September/October 2002), http://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue1/thelonglook.htm.
[35] Jeffrey, “A Formula for Art,” 4.
[36] Lingwood, “Working the System,” 95.
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