TODD HIDO: "Two Way Street"



Todd Hido's new and unpublished work walks a fine line, a line that exists in the viewer rather than Todd. This work seems to come into existence through the eye's of a smeared-single-pane-window voyeur fog. It is the adult-white-male fog of childhood memories, the mental hot-iron-branding of broken families, divorced parents, alchohol, abuse... of 1970's vinyl feelings and plastic textures, popcorn ceilings and paneled-walls. It is a disturbing world that brings with it smells and sounds that are padlocked into the brain with a Freudish rush of emotion – the harsh emotion of the human psyche and the physical feelings of a traumatic sexual memory that has been locked forever into the consciousness... never to be set free. Phone-sex-operators, classified-ad-fetish-girls and white-trash-cotton-tube-top-prostitutes look back at you through flash-lit-black-circled-eye's, through the snapshot-amateur-porn-camera, through the page, through Todd's own head and into your face with harsh empty stares. It is not coldness that is felt but instead scarred naked vulnerability, little girl innocence long, long lost. A knowingness pours out to the viewer and an immediate understanding is passed between "them" and you. It is an understanding that their past contains ugliness, contains the scars of men walking across them like so many paved steps across a cracked ranch-style suburban driveway. These are not powerful females, they are victims of their sexual beauty and of life's brutal circumstance. The exterior scenes act as a view of the locations, the outside to their "inside", the setting for their willing and complicit participation, the dingy house and stained-sheet room for their dirty little "two way" acts.




In the context of this horribly mundane world of current contemporary photography, Todd's work stands apart from the pack by a wide gap. This gap is made up by the sledgehammer authenticity of Todd's vision, by a violent undercurrent of emotion that hits the viewer like a baseball bat clearing a drunken human path. I don't care about the reality, only the photographs matter and what they exist as - what they say - what they are - not what Todd is.




This is photography... as it should be. Giving a middle finger to genre, telling concept or categorization to kindly f-off, Todd has upped his ante with the new work and continues to be left to stand in his own space, defying classification... carving out his own path.

As it should be.

Regards,

Doug Rickard

All ASX Articles, Essays, Galleries & Video by Category: Todd Hido
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AMERICAN SUBURB X: TODD HIDO: "Two Way Street"Tweet this!

SHELBY LEE ADAMS: "All of Us - An Essay (2007)"

SHELBY LEE ADAMS: "All of Us - An Essay (2007)"
" From the beginning, I never felt the need to use photography to implement change. Certainly not change in the way documentary photography had served us before. This response comes from growing up in Kentucky and seeing how documentary/sociological photography hurt my people..."

JOSEF KOUDELKA: "Modern Sublime - The World of Josef Koudelka"

JOSEF KOUDELKA: "Modern Sublime - The World of Josef Koudelka"
""Devastation is photogenic," claims Koudelka whose empathy with the scars left on the environment by Man's violent carelessness is expressed through the dark and strictly-composed draughts of a "mad geometrician." The photographer's black and white prints (he only used color once and never liked it) recreate a world that lies somewhere between Shakespeare's King Lear and Alfred jarry's Ubu Roi. It is a world of muted sound and obvious devastation seen and told by an extremely opinioned and almost obsessive eye whose fascinated and fascinating quest follows a manic spiral..."

MARK RICE: "Through the Lens of the City: NEA Photography Surveys of the 1970s" (2005)

MARK RICE: "Through the Lens of the City: NEA Photography Surveys of the 1970s" (2005)
"The Los Angeles Documentary Project was one of the most ambitious of all the photography surveys supported by the NEA. In addition to including more photographers (eight) than any of the other Greater L.A. surveys, Los Angeles presented a larger subject than any of the other NEA-supported surveys of cities. The application noted that the project would be “a visual examination of the sociological and topographical diversity of one of the most dynamic and unusual cities in the world...”

BILL OWENS: "Suburbia" (2000)

BILL OWENS: "Suburbia" (2000)
"Owens explains that, "the photographs for Suburbia weren't done by accident. I put together a shooting script of events that I wanted to photograph... Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Birthdays, et cetera. I got a small grant, and began taking photographs every Saturday for a year, so basically Suburbia was shot in 52 days..."

ANTHONY HERNANDEZ - "Phantoms and Dreams, Ghosts and Grit..."

ANTHONY HERNANDEZ - "Phantoms and Dreams, Ghosts and Grit..."
"The 1970’s photographs of Anthony Hernandez possess something stupendous, something despairing and faint... lusciously strange… something that is fleeting, or maybe some would say… “hard to pin down”. Of course the aesthetic is godsmackingly gorgeous in its bleak ugliness…"

ANTOINE D'AGATA: "Dead Shell Walking..."

ANTOINE D\
"A living thing yes, a tortured adventuring heartbeat, yes... perhaps a sort of hybrid man-beast animal behind glass... one that seeks, that follows its urges and never finds satisfaction...

ROBERT FRANK: "Dissecting the American Image" (1986)

ROBERT FRANK: "Dissecting the American Image" (1986)
" Unified in intent -- as an experience, as a disdainful gesture, as a critique of photography, and superimposed on a critique of America -- the combined power of these images voiced that something was wrong, that changes had to be made. Often more felt than rationally understood, the message became a radical point of departure for the work among a generation of photographers. Even for those more inclined to the opaque formal qualities of Frank's photographs, it was the circumstances of publication of the book which informed any understanding of the photographs, rather than a meaning derived from the content of the book..."

HALLY PANCER: "America 1986-1990"

HALLY PANCER: "America 1986-1990"
The blacktop, it’s cracked and your heart beats a-flowin’… open road blisters peal off and your goin’, patriot eye’s - shit covered in flies, lay back in the chevy and look at the skies. Big damn breath-stealing skies & American hearts-American eyes. Out there the young one’s, the old one’s, the black one’s and the cold one’s. The broken one’s and the gold one’s, white one’s and the bold one’s. Red and yellow - brown and mellow. Hollowed-out bones and melancholy tones. And the hope-filled-heroes. The tricksters-the greasers-the dreamers and the killers. Every one of ‘em out there. Even them cowboys, bikers & Mexicanos..."

TODD HIDO: "Two Way Street"

TODD HIDO: "Two Way Street"
"This work seems to come into existence through the eye's of a smeared-single-pane-window voyeur fog. It is the adult-white-male fog of childhood memories, the mental hot-iron-branding of broken families, divorced parents, alchohol, abuse... of 1970's vinyl feelings and plastic textures, popcorn ceilings and paneled-walls. It is a disturbing world that brings with it smells and sounds that are padlocked into the brain with a Freudish rush of emotion – the harsh emotion of the human psyche and the physical feelings of a traumatic sexual memory that has been locked forever into the consciousness... never to be set free. Phone-sex-operators, classified-ad-fetish-girls and white-trash-cotton-tube-top-prostitutes look back at you through flash-lit-black-circled-eye's, through the snapshot-amateur-porn-camera, through the page, through Todd's own head and into your face with harsh empty stares..."

STEPHEN SHORE: "Gil Blank and Stephen Shore in Conversation (2007)"

STEPHEN SHORE: "Gil Blank and Stephen Shore in Conversation (2007)"
"Yes. So there was a little bit of overlap, but I’ll specifically tie it to a shift in equipment. All of American Surfaces was done using a Rollei 35 millimeter camera, which was a precursor to the point-and-shoot. It was very small, very unpretentious-looking, very amateurish in a way. All of Uncommon Places was done with a view camera..."

TONY STAMOLIS: "FREZNO"

TONY STAMOLIS: "FREZNO"
"FREZNO IS WACK. Take a fast-drive into a cement wall- broken AC sweat stained moustache drippin’ – ugly streets – stupid palm trees standin’ in an ugly row tellin’ you to run away from here fast – dirt in your ratty hair..."

EMMET GOWIN: "Interview with Emmet Gowin (1998)"

EMMET GOWIN: "Interview with Emmet Gowin (1998)"
"You're absolutely right and what a good point. The fact that something is unsayable, that you are emotionally restricted from saying or even recognizing consciously what your own spirit is struggling with, energizes one's work. That is exactly where good work comes from. And that's why you can't ask somebody to find out what it is they need to do..."

RICHARD BILLINGHAM - "Ray's a Laugh"

RICHARD BILLINGHAM - "Ray\
"A long time ago, far, far away, in a rainy-king and queen-filled land, in a colorful little-knick-knack, jigsaw-puzzle, cat-hair-filled, grease-streaked, filthy tiny fishbowl, baby Richie was born. Little Richie came into this lovely rainy little world born to proud parents, drunk-unemployed-Ray and devoted-enormous-"big"-Liz Billingham..."

HENRY WESSEL: "Behind the Wheel with Henry Wessel (2007)"

HENRY WESSEL: "Behind the Wheel with Henry Wessel (2007)"
"These images possess the combination of comedy and contemplation, striking graphics and mysterious subtext, formality and oddness that gives Wessel's work its distinctive look. Also paradoxical is how convincingly real Wessel's eccentrically framed, frozen-looking subjects appear, the result of his practice of overexposing his film and then under-developing it to achieve a clarity of detail and tonal range rivaling that of the naked eye."

WILLIAM EGGLESTON: "Draft of a Presentation (2003)"

WILLIAM EGGLESTON: "Draft of a Presentation (2003)"
"And every time I see a new picture of his, there is this moment of recognition, a first hasty grasping, and then the close study of the photograph. The subject matter, the composition, the color. His photographs burn themselves in our memories, and you can't get rid of them. Why is that so?..."

THOMAS RUFF: "Gil Blank with Thomas Ruff (2004)"

THOMAS RUFF: "Gil Blank with Thomas Ruff (2004)"
"When I started with the portraits, it was with an awareness that we were living at the end of the twentieth century, in an industrialized Western country. We weren’t living by candlelight in caves anymore. We were in surroundings where everything was brightly illuminated—even our parking garages. Surveillance cameras were everywhere, and you were being watched all the time."

INTERVIEW: "Interview with Camilo Jose Vergara (2007)"

INTERVIEW: "Interview with Camilo Jose Vergara (2007)"
"But, by and large, this is a country that has come through for immigrants, and that counts for people just about everywhere. It is the natives, those are the ones that get screwed. It’s the folks that were here that own the place to begin with, the folks that came here as slaves and ended up in the core ghettos and they’ve been there three, four generations. Before that, they were in some plantation exploited by some landowner."