Thomas Ruff was present on the day of 9/11 in New York. He took many images on the day, but unfortunately lost them all. He then became obsessed with the idea of downloading very low resolution images of the event, form other people on the internet. This meant that when the images were enlarged, the pixel pattern became distorted, making the image blurred. He displayed these images on a very large scale on gallery walls.
These images brings up the debate about the ownership of images. If he downloaded them from the internet, are they still owned by the people who took the image, or by putting them online make them public property? By displaying the images in a gallery, and putting his name on them, does this mean the images are his?
The images are of a cultural memory, that nearly everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news. This relates back to the idea of memory, and how we remember significant events. I don't think I like theses images myself, and I do not fully understand if these are his images or not. I still see these images as the original owners images, by downloading them, it does not make them his property.