Rut Blees Luxemburg is a Professor and Reader in Urban Aesthetics at the Royal College of Art in London.
Rut Blees Luxemburg’s work as an artist and photographer concerns the representation of the city and the phenomenon of the urban, combining formats from large-scale photographic work.
Rut studied Political Science in Duisburg, Germany, before attending the London College of Printing to complete her BA in Photography in 1993. She graduated with an MA in Photography from the University of Westminster in 1996.
Her first monograph, London – A Modern Project, appeared in 1997 and included an essay by Michael Bracewell; it was followed by Liebeslied/My Suicides, with text by Alexander Garcia Düttmann in 2000. In 2004, the photobook, ffolly, with texts by Cerith Wyn Evans, Patrick Lynch, Douglas Park, was published by ffotoworks. The most comprehensive monograph on her work, Commonsensual, was published by Black Dog in 2009 and includes a critical essay by Regis Durand. In 2012, the Museum Simeonstift in Trier, Germany held a survey show of her work, Lustgarten.
Recent projects include: Silver Forest (2016) an architectural installation on the western façade of Westminster City Hall; and London Dust (2011–13) a series of photographs and a film that trace the rapid architectural transformation of the City of London in relation to the development of CGI photographic representation. She created the iconic cover for the The Streets’ Original Pirate Material.