Whitechapel Gallery to host first major Thomas Ruff retrospective in London

The Whitechapel Gallery is to stage the first major London retrospective of photographs by Thomas Ruff this autumn. Organised by the institutions director, Iwona Blazwick, the survey will include examples of all the German artists key seriesfrom his billboard-sized portraits of friends shot in Dsseldorf in the 1980s to his exquisitely coloured photographs derived from Japanese manga.This is an artist who changed the language of photography, Blazwick says. His entire oeuvre is very complex, but