biography

To see the beat. To hear the moment. For Katja Ruge, Photographer, DJ and music producer, portraits and pop are inextricably linked.

Studying Katja Ruge’s intense photographs, it feels like you are discovering the inner core of the person portrayed, deep down even to their hidden character traits. It is a skill based on craft: Katja Ruge has learned her profession from scratch at graphic/design school and as a photo lab technician, besides working as photo assistant, music promoter and art director, before turning full-time self-employed photographer in 2000.

When working with Katja Ruge, you get to know a very empathic yet deeply professional person. “ I build up a relationship with the other person at once ”. As a photographer, she is an accomplice on equal footing who listens very closely and finds out at once whether the person in front of her is in need of an energy kick or rather a kind word. With clear specifications and warm-hearted motivation, sensitive power of observation and an intuitive feel for image composition, she has created iconic portraits of hundreds of artists.

A great deal of her female artist portraits was shown in her critically acclaimed and repeatedly prolonged exhibition “Ladyflash”.

Katja Ruge’s pop culturally sharpened view originates in the fact that she is living music history. In the 90s, she lived in Manchester, at the hub of the rave culture that developed around the legendary Hacienda club. The years in England had a deep impact on her and inspired her renowned book Fotoreportage 23 – In Search Of Ian Curtis", a black and white study following the tracks of the late Joy Division singer.

In 2020 she was a guest at the European Month in Berlin as #artistinaction and created her widely acclaimed exhibition “One Room One Light” in the Tempel 1844 during the lockdown.

By now, Katja Ruge passes her combined competence in music and photography on to others as a lecturer and mentor. To come up with a distinctive and courageous imagery is very important to her. Always at the height of fashion without following trends. With photography just as with music, Katja Ruge never strictly bows to a form or a genre but adjusts to the given situation.

As a DJ she is playing everything from synth pop to Italo-disco what fits into her sound universe. Inspired by a series of photographs she portrayed vintage synthesizers, and presented them as oversized collages . It was seen in the Kunsthaus Graz, at the SXSW in Austin, at the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg and in the mountains of Lech am Arlberg projected.

Together with Frank Husemann, they are the duo "Can Love Be Synth", they produce complete analog sounds in the Synthesizer Studio Hamburg and have various remixes and own releases out on labels such as Bordello A Parigi, Mute Records, Ombra Int. And TAU.