Todd Hido lectured at a gallery a few blocks down our street tonight. I’d never seen him before, and (gasp) brushed past him in the gallery before the talk. When he stood up at the lectern, I remarked to myself how un-Todd-Hido-like he looked.
When you’ve seen so much of a photographer’s work, you form an impression of how he should look.
Hido was a balding, bespectacled, mild-looking man in a pink shirt. And he showed his Californianess, peppering his speech with “like” every two seconds. Like, you know, this.
Hido is the master behind a body of work that Jay and I adore. His study of surburbia gives houses a desolute, menacing aura that somehow draws you in.
His scenes – devoid of people – betray their presence nevertheless: The flicker of a TV set, a lighted bedroom, an abandoned tricycle leaning against the wall.
He says he keeps his images sparse to allow viewers to fill in their own stories. He calls himself a documentarian, but noted, “You’re looking at the house, but you’re not seeing anything.”
I like how Hido sees something in negative space.
You shoot what is not there, to see what is there.
Hi there,
If you don’t mine me asking, where was this lecture held?.That’s a beautiful photograph by the way.
The exhibition and talk were held at the Photographic Center Northwest (www.pcnw.org) in Seattle. I love Todd Hido’s stuff!