Thomas Ruff – l.m.v.d.r. Volume 1

When the German photog­ra­pher turned his lens on the archi­tec­ture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the result was less a cele­bra­tion of modernist form and more a cool inter­ro­ga­tion of it. Orig­i­nally published for a land­mark 2000 exhi­bi­tion at Krefeld’s Haus Lange and Haus Esters — the very build­ings he sought to visu­ally disman­tle—Thomas Ruff – l.m.v.d.r. Volume 1 captures the artist’s char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally clin­i­cal aesthetic. Accom­pa­nied by analyt­i­cal essays from Julian Heynen and Rita Kerst­ing, the book’s phys­i­cal design mirrors its subject: bound in under­stated, matte off-white wrap­pers and stamped with silver foil, it func­tions as a piece of reduc­tive archi­tec­ture in its own right.