Todd Hido (born 25 August 1968) is an American photographer. He has produced 17 books, had his work exhibited widely and included in various public collections. Hido is currently an adjunct professor at the
California College of the Arts
California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996 it opened a second campus in Sa ...
in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (Museum School, SMFA at Tufts, or SMFA; formerly the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is the art school of Tufts University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusett ...
. Between 1991 and 1992 he studied at
Rhode Island School of Design
The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...
,
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts ...
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
. Among his professors was the photographer Larry Sultan, who will later become his mentor.
Much of Hido's earlier work involves photographs of urban and suburban housing across the U.S.. Hido accidentally approached what would be one of his best-known themes, when driving at night on the West Coast, he started photographing houses in different neighborhoods. The houses often seemed isolated and had mostly in common the presence of a window with the light on. From this research it came his book ''House Hunting'', published in 2001.
He then started to include figures, mostly female nudes in interiors, and also to depict rural landscapes. In 2006 he published the monograph ''Between The Two''. Hido combines interior photos and portraits taken of models and actresses, maintaining an aesthetic similar to that of its first publication. Also in this book there are night shots of buildings. No text or description were inserted, so as to leave the viewer total freedom of interpretation. In 2018, he released ''Bright Black World'', his first work photographed outside the U.S. with environmental overtones.
Hido says he is influenced by Alfred Hitchcock,
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching.
Hopper created subdued drama ...
Walker Evans
Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' work from ...
,
Nan Goldin
Nancy Goldin (born September 12, 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is '' The Ballad of Sexual Depe ...
,
Emmet Gowin
Emmet Gowin (born 1941) is an American photographer. He first gained attention in the 1970s with his intimate portraits of his wife, Edith, and her family. Later he turned his attention to the landscapes of the American West, taking aerial photogr ...
Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.
He is known for his large format architecture and landscape colour photographs, often using a high point of view. His works ...
and
Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra HonFRPS (born 2 June 1959) is a Dutch photographer. She lives and works in Amsterdam.Bottega Veneta, he photographed actress Lauren Hutton as well as models
Joan Smalls
Joan Smalls Rodriguez (born July 11, 1988) is a Puerto Rican supermodel and actress. In 2011, she became the first Latina model to represent Estée Lauder cosmetics. In 2013, she entered ''Forbes'' magazine's "World's Highest-Paid Models" list ...
and Vittoria Ceretti for the brand's spring/summer 2017 advertisements.
Publications
Publications by Hido
* ''House Hunting''.
** Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2001. .
** Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2007. .
* ''Outskirts''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2002. . Text by Lucy Sante. Edition of 2000 copies.
* ''Taft Street''. One Picture Book 6. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2001. .
* ''Roaming''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2004. Edition of 3000 copies.
* ''Between the Two''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2006. . Edition of 2000 copies.
* ''Crooked Cracked Tree in Fog''. One Picture Book 60. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2009. . Edition of 500 copies.
* ''Ohio.'' TBW Subscription Series #2. Oakland, CA: TBW, 2009. . Edition of 800 copies. The other volumes are by Abner Nolan, Marianne Mueller and
Alec Soth
Alec Soth (born 1969) is an American photographer, based in Minneapolis. Soth makes "large-scale American projects" featuring the midwestern United States. ''New York Times'' art critic Hilarie M. Sheets wrote that he has made a "photographic care ...
.
* ''A Road Divided''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2010. .
* ''Nymph Daughters''. Kamakura: Super Labo, 2010. . Edition of 500 copies.
* ''Excerpts from Silver Meadows''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2013.
* ''Todd Hido on Landscapes, Interiors, and the Nude.'' The Photography Workshop Series. New York:
Aperture
In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane.
An ...
, 2014. . With an introduction by
Gregory Halpern
Gregory Halpern (born 1977) is an American photographer and teacher. He currently teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology and is a nominee member of Magnum Photos.
Halpern has published a number of books of his own work; ''Zzyzx'' won Ph ...
.
* ''B-Sides – Silver Meadows.'' Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2014. . Edition of 500 copies. 50 individual cards in a clear plexi box, similar to a pack of playing cards.
* ''Khrystyna's World.'' Amsterdam: Reflex Amsterdam, 2015. . Edition of 500 copies. Published on the occasion of the exhibition, ''Todd Hido: Selections from a Survey: Khrystyna's World,'' 2015, Reflex Amsterdam, Amsterdam. With an essay by Katya Tylevich, "Khrystyna's World: Detention in the Getaway Car".A PDF of the book can be viewe here within the Reflex Gallery website .
* ''Seasons Road''. One Picture Book 93. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2016. . Edition of 500 copies. 7 colour plates and 1 photographic print. "Every year at Christmas for the past ten years, Todd Hido has traveled to Ohio to visit his parents. During his annual trip home, Hido makes photographs along the small road that serves as the namesake for this book."
* ''Intimate Distance: Twenty-five Years of Photographs, A Chronological Album.'' New York: Aperture, 2016. . With an essay by David Campany.
* ''B-Sides Box Sets – Homing In.'' Oakland, CA: B-Sides Box Sets, 2017. . Edition of 2000 copies. 50 individual cards in a box. Previously unpublished photographs from ''House Hunting.''
* ''Bright Black World.'' Paso Robles, CA: Nazraeli, 2018. . Text by Alexander Nemerov.
Smaller publications by Hido
* ''Collage Number Three.'' Deadbeat Club #41. Los Angeles, CA: Deadbeat Club, 2016. Edition of 500 copies. 8 page zine which folds out to form a poster.
* ''The Perfect Copy Vol. 1.'' San Francisco, CA: Colpa, 2016. Six 4-color Risograph photographic prints in screen printed envelope. Edition of 100 copies.
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...
, Cleveland, Ohio, 2002
* ''Open House,'' Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002
* ''Roaming-New Landscapes'', Julie Saul Gallery, 2004
* ''Unfinished Narratives'', Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, WA, 2006
* ''House Hunting'' + ''Bright Black World'', part of Imago Festival, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal, 2020
Group
* ''Light and Atmosphere,''
Miami Art Museum
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at th ...
, FL, 2004/5
* ''Suburban Escape,''
San Jose Museum of Art
The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast artists of the 20th and 21st centur ...
, San Jose, CA, 2006/7. Work by Hido and 29 other photographers.
* ''Pier 24: The Inaugural Exhibition'', Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA, 2010
* ''Day & Night,'' Main Exhibition Copenhagen Photo Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2010
* ''Here'', Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA, 2011/12
* ''About Face'', Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA, 2012/13
* ''A Sense of Place'', Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA, 2013/14
* ''The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip,''
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission.
Overview ...
, Bentonville, AR, 2016. Curated by David Campany and Denise Wolff.
* ''Collected'', Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA, 2016/17
Awards
* 1996: Barclay Simpson Award,
California College of the Arts
California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996 it opened a second campus in Sa ...
, CA. Joinet winner with Geoffrey Chadsey.
* 1998: The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Visual Arts Award.The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation's "Special Awards Recipients 1987-Present" PD here does not list Hido.
* 1998: Recent Graduate of Distinction Award, California College of the Arts, CA.
* 2001: Eureka Fellowship, Fleishhacker Foundation.
* 2002: Best First Monograph of 2001, Photo-Eye.
* 2017: In Focus Artist selected by the National Portrait Gallery UK curators, an annual showcase for new work by an internationally renowned photographer