Michael Ruetz - Biography

Biography

Michael Ruetz was born in 1940 in Berlin, Germany). His ancestors were from Riga, where they worked as printers, journalists and publishers. After attending school in Bremen, Michael Ruetz studied Sinology, with Japanology and Journalism as subsidiary subjects, in Freiburg, Munich and Berlin. Until 1969 he worked on a dissertation on the novel Nieh-Hai Hua by Tseng-P’u (1905). In 1975, Michael Ruetz graduated as external student from the Folkwang Hochschule Essen. He was a member of the Stern editorial in Hamburg from 1969–1973. Since then he is self-employed and works as a freelance author and photographer.

Since 1981 Michael Ruetz is a contract author for publishers Little, Brown & Co./New York Graphic Society, Boston, Massachusetts. In 1982 he became professor of Communication Design at the Braunschweig University of Art and taught Photography until 2005. Michael Ruetz lived abroad, in Italy, Australia and the U.S., for 12 years altogether. In 2002 he organised a major retrospective of German photographer Heinz Hajek-Halke in Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Michael Ruetz is a member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh), the Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner (GDL)/Deutsche Foto Akademie and the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. In May 2002 he was appointed member of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres by French Minister of the Arts, Jean-Jacques Aillagon.