Michael Ruetz was born in Berlin in 1940. He studied Sinology, Japanese and journalism and lived abroad for thirteen years. From 1969 to 1973, he was a staff photographer for the weekly magazine Stern. Since then he has worked solely as a freelance photographer and as a contract writer and photographer with Little Brown and Company/New York Graphic Society. Ruetz is a professor for communication design at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig, Germany, and is a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. He was appointed Officier des Arts et Lettres in 2006. With Steidl he has published Sichtbare Zeit, Das Willy-Brandt-Haus, Bibliothek der Augen, Cosmos, WindAuge, Eye on Time, Die
unbequeme Zeit and Eye on Infinity.