How much visual information is needed for image recognition? A pretty small quantity of data will go a long way for the brain and the computer, both of which take shortcuts for the sake of speedy comprehension. In the Jpegs series, German photographer Thomas Ruff exploits this imprecision in digital technology, locating online jpegs and enlarging them until the pixels emerge in a chessboard pattern of near abstraction. A closer look at these images reveals that, in addition to the degeneration of the image into a digital grid, the color and brightness generated by the algorithms of the compression also become visible. Many of Ruff's works in this series focus on idyllic, seemingly untouched landscapes, or conversely, on scenes of war and nature disturbed by human manipulation--subjects ill suited to disruptive pixelation, and therefore perfect for Ruff's purposes. Taken together, these images constitute an encyclopedic compendium of contemporary visual culture that also engages the history of landscape painting. A fittingly deluxe and oversize volume, Jpegs is the first monograph dedicated exclusively to this monumental series.
FREE Two-Day Shipping for Students. Learn more |
| ||||||||||||
 Sell Back Your Copy for $30.53
Whether you buy it used on Amazon for $44.95 or somewhere else, you can sell it back through our Book Trade-In Program at the current price of $30.53.
Used Price$44.95
Trade-in Price$30.53
Price after
Trade-in$14.42 |
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- Buy $50 in qualifying physical textbooks, get $5 in Amazon MP3 Credit. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Photography today lives, quick and dirty, compressed and lossy, on Flickr and Google Earth and the Web in general. Copy a jpeg and enlarge it - make the medium the message, as Ruff does here primarily with images of landscapes and disasters - and it fractures into the twenty-first-century Impressionism of pixilation, a quality that feels both sensual and cold and equalises everything from an al-Qaeda training camp to a neo-Romantic waterfall scene... 'Jpegs' can be considered nothing less than a summa of how we picture the world today: in a manner both panoptical and flattened, losing resolution to gain information." --Art Review
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprising,
By
This review is from: Thomas Ruff: Jpegs (Hardcover)
This is a very large and oversized book which helps add to the painterly qualities of these images. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed looking at these since I wasn't expecting much. The colors are vivid and these make you question whether you are looking at a photo or something else.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
