# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
American Todd Hido is best known for his photographs of a haunting suburbia in 'Homes At Night'. Widely exhibited in the United States and Europe, his eerie exteriors project feelings of unease and isolation, as the presence of people is devoid. Hido uses only available light and long exposures that make these saturated images almost glow off the print. His exploration into themes of loneliness continues through to his interior shots which are again absent of people, but suggest that a presence was once there - a door left ajar, a chair turned over, creased bedding. Less celebrated are his series of portraits, again set in vacuous places but this time with models. There is something intriguing about these that hold your gaze, as amateur, scantily clad models pose awkwardly for the camera.

Dazed Digital: What attracted you to suburbs in the first place?
Todd Hido: I definitely remember one day driving up a hill to a suburban neighborhood in the south of San Francisco and I found this completely fogbound neighborhood that very much reminded me of the place I grew up in Ohio. I started making pictures there that night and I've been visiting the suburbs ever since. That was about 15 years ago.

DD: There is a very unsettling atmosphere throughout your photography, is this always intentional and why do you choose to shoot such sinister shots? Are you a moody guy?
Todd Hido: I'm actually not a moody guy at all! But I can clearly see that my work is. I guess I'm attracted to that cinematic feeling where something's about to happen. Kind of like a pregnant moment. I'm very much attracted to that kind of narrative element.

DD: Your work has a clear style - does anyone inspire or influence this?
Todd Hido: I am very much influenced by my past. I was a student of Larry Sultan's about 15 years ago and he remained a good friend until he passed away last year. He was a clear influence on my work and I think that the most important thing that Larry taught me was to draw from within, to use your own history as the basis for your art.

DD: The quality of your images is incredible, what camera and film do you prefer to shoot with?
Todd Hido: Thank you--I appreciate that. I have been using the same camera for the last 20 years--a Pentax 6 x 7 medium format camera and I've been using Kodak Portra of 400NC film forever. One of the main reasons that my work looks the way it does is because I've printed in the darkroom myself. I'm still using all analog technology and I go to the darkroom a couple of times a week to print. This is a very important part of my process. In most of my work nothing is staged, I shoot like a documentarian, but I print like a painter, often my contact sheets look nothing like my final prints.

DD: Your latest work has been more portrait based, is this a change in direction? What's next?
Todd Hido: Yes and no. I have actually shot portraits as long as I've been shooting houses but more recently I've begun to combine the two as I find that I really like what happens when you put a person with a place. It tends to open the door wider for more complex storytelling. And yes, I definitely have been moving more in that direction lately working with blending photographs taken with an old snapshot camera from the 70s. It definitely adds another layer to the story.

DD: There is a definite movie-like feel to your images, as you present the viewer with open-ended scenes. Could you see yourself going into films?
Todd Hido: At this point I don't think so as I really like the singular challenge of making images one at a time and then combining them into a simple sequence. There is a really great quote the Lewis Baltz said that I think sums this up: "Photography is a profound corner that sits in between literature and film"

Todd Hido has produced several books namely 'House Hunting' and 'Between the Two' (both Nazraeli Press)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
American Todd Hido is best known for his photographs of a haunting suburbia in 'Homes At Night'. Widely exhibited in the United States and Europe, his eerie exteriors project feelings of unease and isolation, as the presence of people is devoid. Hido uses only available light and long exposures that make these saturated images almost glow off the print.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Night(Light): An Interview with Todd Hido

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Night(Light): An Interview with Todd Hido

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Circa asks photographer Todd Hido what inspires him to take his camera house hunting after dark.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Aesthetica Magazine - Interview with San Francisco-Based Photographer Todd Hido

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
San Francisco-based photographer Todd Hido explores urban and suburban housing across the USA, producing large, highly detailed and luminous colour photographs influenced by iconic 20th century film makers and documentary photographers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Walker Evans and Nan Goldin. His work will feature in Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam's international photography fair and festival, from 18 September. We interview Hido about his practice.

A: You shoot all of your photographs on film and then develop them yourself, which really shows in the quality of the prints. Could you talk a little about your process and the freedoms/restrictions it gives you?
TH: Over the years, I've expanded my repertoire of image-making to include shooting with vintage 126 cameras, 35 mm film, and a Pentax 6×7 all analogue and printed in the darkroom, but I've also recently with great success incorporated a Nikon D800 digital camera into the fold. For many years I shot with these three film cameras, and most of the things I shot I would try out with each camera, especially with portraits. Each camera, as one of my models very simply pointed out, is "like a different paintbrush."

After years of not jumping on the digital bandwagon and being a hold-out in the analogue realm, I finally got to try a camera that I felt made pictures I could mix directly with the images I made primarily with my Pentax 6×7. When I print them side by side and compare them, it's hard to even notice a difference, which is precisely what was very important, as I didn't want to be using a new tool that I couldn't incorporate into my growing archive of imagery and have it stand out in a super different way. Being able to handhold a digital camera and shoot at night is one of the most freeing experiences that I have ever encountered. No loss of quality and it opens the doors to me making many pictures that I would drive by, because it used to take me ten minutes to take a picture at night, and that's just for the exposure.

A: In Homes at Night you feature buildings where there's light spilling out of windows, which focuses the viewer on the potential action and inhabitants inside house. What is it about the tension between inside and outside spaces that interests you?
TH: Sometimes when I'm standing outside a house looking in, the lights come on and the inside seeps to the outside. But not really, it's just light and curtains that we see in all my photos, and what I really like is that anything that I or anyone else has thought about with regards to who might live in any of the homes that I picture, is a creation in the mind. This goes along with something I always think about, which is that the meaning of the image resides in the viewer.

A: Many of your images capture what feel like pregnant moments, which have an almost cinematic feel to them; as though your photographs are held breaths before a narrative progression or an approach of a scene. Is that something you look for when shooting and how do you go about encapsulating those types of scenes?
TH: That's a very beautiful thought that they appear to be held breaths - I love that - and how I achieve that I honestly don't know, I simply shoot the things that I find resonate with me on a personal level. There's no formula and it's not strategic. What amazes me sometimes is what happens with other people looking at my images and how they connect with them personally. One of my favorite comments I've ever received about my work from a stranger is this: "Todd Hido's photographs do something to me. Like he remembers my memories, except he hasn't met me and I haven't met him..."

A: Your books often feature writing alongside your photography. Is literature a source of inspiration for your work?
TH: Raymond Carver has been a steady influence. The way he writes, when I read it, makes me see pictures. He does this more than anyone for me. But my largest influence for my work has been my childhood, and I feel like I'm constantly drawing from that in some way or another when making my images.

A: Both your books and exhibitions seem to be very carefully curated to fit their medium. This is evident in the difference between something like Nymph Daughters which feels very experimental in comparison to Outskirts or House Hunting. Do you have to make different kinds of choices depending on the medium, and what drives those choices?
TH: Yes, absolutely. When you're making a short little paperback publication there's a different approach than one would use when making a 130 image monograph with 4 double gatefolds. You're very right, they are carefully curated and edited pretty much exclusively by me. Early on I would seek the opinion of others, but I've moved into a very independent way of making the selections that appear in my books. There's much deliberation and page-turning on my part. I always make a physical book dummy and swap in printouts and new images as I make them, and it's a multi-step process that takes months and months to fine tune. I've been very blessed that my primary publisher Nazraeli Press has allowed me the freedom to work like this, and I feel like the books we make are greatly benefited by me having this long, slow, solo experience of deciding what's in and what's out, and most importantly, the sequence those images end up in.

Discover more at www.toddhido.com and www.unseenamsterdam.com.

Unseen Photo Fair, 18-20 September, Westergasfabriek Amsterdam.
Unseen Festival, 18-27 September, locations across Amsterdam.

Follow us on Twitter @AestheticaMag for the latest news in contemporary art and culture.

Credits:
1. Todd Hido, Selections from a Survey - Khrystyana's World, 2015. Courtesy of Galerie Alex Daniels and Reflex Amsterdam.

Posted on 2 September 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Aesthetica Magazine - Interview with San Francisco-Based Photographer Todd Hido

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
San Francisco-based photographer Todd Hido explores urban and suburban housing across the USA, producing large, highly detailed and luminous colour photographs influenced by iconic 20th century film makers and documentary photographers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Walker Evans and Nan Goldin. His work will feature in Unseen Photo Fair , Amsterdam's international photography fair and festival, from 18 September.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Todd Hido | Biography & Art Works | Huxley-Parlour Gallery

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Todd Hido's photographs are made during long, solitary drives. The main subject of his work is the American urban and suburban landscape, often photographed at night. Celebrated for his use of textural detail and colour, Hido explores subtleties and variations in light and shadow found in these quietly unsettling scenes. Isolated suburban houses have gone on to become an ongoing source of inspiration and investigation for the artist. His work has a cinematic quality, reproducing the aesthetic of the film still. The artist brings these expressive, eery qualities to his photographs of unpopulated interiors which explore similar themes to his landscape work.

Todd Hido was born in Kent, Ohio in 1968. He received his B.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University. In 1996, he earned his M.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Hido has been the recipient of the Eureka Fellowship, Fleishhacker Foundation, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Visual Arts Award, and the Barclay Simpson Award. His photographs have been featured in Artforum, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, Elephant and . His work is held in the permanent collections of many noted public and private collections including the Getty, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is currently an adjunct professor at the California College of Art in San Francisco.

Hido lives and works in San Francisco.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Huxley-Parlour Gallery, founded in London in 2010, is a forward-thinking modern and contemporary art gallery. Representing over 25 artists and estates across a wide range of mediums, the gallery's dynamic program is committed to creating a dialogue between those artists who have made an impact on recent art history, and those who are at its vanguard today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Todd Hido On "Homes at Night" and Illustrating Memories in Photography - Interview by Coralie Kraft | LensCulture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"One thing that is important to know about my work is that not all of it is about me or things that I have encountered...many of the narratives come from things I have seen in others."

Photographer Todd Hido has made a career out of creating imagery that sticks with you, in part because it seems so familiar. His unique landscapes-frequently devoid of active human figures, yet suffused with energy-resonate because they feel as though they have been directly pulled from the recesses of your own memory.

With work in the permanent collections at the Whitney Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, SFMoMA, the Smithsonian, and Pier 24, Hido is no stranger to the world of art photography. As such, we are thrilled that he has agreed to take part in our Art Photography Awards (closing July 3rd) as a jury member.

Curious to learn more about Hido's working process, LensCulture editor Coralie Kraft reached out for a conversation about his new work, how he stays inspired, re-creating memories, and more.

-LensCulture

LensCulture: It seems that a lot of your work concerns the "internal" world (both yours and your viewer's). How much do you let the external world-politics, the cultural climate-impact your photography?

Todd Hido: The internal/personal is often quite political, and external forces have always influenced my work. However, I learned from my mentor, Larry Sultan, that it is through the personal connection that one could relate to another in a truly impactful way.

For one of my last books, Excerpts from Silver Meadows, I was deeply influenced by a television that is constantly running in my kitchen, playing CNN. As I worked on my edit of photographs, there were a lot of really crazy things going on politically. These things absolutely filtered into my work.

Dorothea Lange said, "It is a photographer's task to portray what exists and prevails." I came to that message through the work of Robert Adams, who has clearly been doing this beautifully and accurately for almost all of his career.

One thing that is important to know about my work is that not all of it is about me or things that I have encountered. Many of the narratives, particularly in Excerpts, come from things I have seen in others.

My latest body of work, entitled Bright Black World, is very much a reaction to the current times that we live in. I was already working on a body of work that touched upon climate change in my own way, which is an issue growing far quicker than we could have imagined. That being said, I think my work became even darker in this truly horrific and inescapable political atmosphere in America today. There is no way you can turn a blind eye or be willfully ignorant to the tide of current events.

LC: Your photographs strongly remind me of Edward Hopper's paintings; smooth vistas, and yet charged. Can you talk about some of the visual material you find inspiring? How do you see that material influencing and impacting your work?

TH: I am a fan of Edward Hopper, and I was delighted to have my work hung next to his at a show at the Whitney Museum. Other visual inspiration for me often comes from my library of over 6,000 photography books that I am constantly adding to and referencing.

I am also inspired by things that are in my daily visual path. I love to leave books open on my dining room table and walk past them 100 times. You would be surprised how much that sinks in and becomes reflected in your work.

LC: Your series Homes at Night is one of my favorites. We never see human silhouettes or the homes' inhabitants. Why is it important to you that the houses appear on their own?

TH: Because of the very simple fact that if it is an empty shell, the viewer can place their own memories within it or create a narrative that would otherwise be blocked by the reality of what is actually inside.

LC: When viewers "place their own memories within," do they ever react in a way that surprises you?

TH: While I know that my work does elicit a response in people, it is often something that is personal and not really shared with me. This, of course, is totally fine.

LC: As a viewer, one sees how your images could potentially bring up uncomfortable thoughts about home and family. Is this intentional? Also, is there a narrative that grounds the series Homes at Night?

TH: In my mind, the meaning or the narratives derived out of a work of art reside in the viewer. There are always multiple interpretations, but one of the most curious things that I hear about my houses at night is when people tell me that they connect with my work because it reminds them of something from their own past.

So, in a way, memory might be the thing that actually grounds the work.

LC: In a previous interview in LensCulture, you said, "Photographs that are merely about an idea or a concept-that stuff eventually falls flat for me. There must be something more, some emotional hook for it to really work." How do you balance concept and emotion in your work? Do you find that sways to one side over the other?

TH: To be honest with you, I don't think about it at all. I just know when I am moved or intrigued.

One or both of those things must be present, and this is essential in order for me to consider an image as something that I would put forward in the world.

LC: Do you ever get burnt out creatively? If so, how do you energize yourself? Do you take time off, search for inspiration outside of the photo world, change up your methods...? I read that you made some of your newer work in Death Valley and Iceland-a clear departure from the suburbs.

TH: I don't really ever get burnt out. I live and breathe photography with the same intensity that I always have. When I am not feeling particularly inspired, I will often turn to my photo library; however, there have definitely been times where I will go out to shoot and I will not see anything.

That usually has something to do with me being in the wrong place-that, or it is a horribly sunny day. All blue skies. In that case, there is nothing worse.

LC: You've worked as a photographer for a long time. When you meet young aspiring artists, do you ever think to yourself, "This person will make it"? If so, why? Do they share personality traits, practices, habits?

TH: I always love when I meet somebody who is truly talented. What makes somebody that way is their drive-they work hard and do not expect things to simply come to them, which is definitely a problem with the millennial generation.

One of my students that has done very well is Greg Halpern. When he first came to class, I immediately noticed that he was very into photography and that he worked very hard. The medium was constantly on his mind.

People with that kind of intensity-and a sense of modesty-are the ones who often make it.

-Todd Hido, interviewed by Coralie Kraft

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Todd Hido On "Homes at Night" and Illustrating Memories in Photography - Interview by Coralie Kraft | LensCulture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"One thing that is important to know about my work is that not all of it is about me or things that I have encountered...many of the narratives come from things I have seen in others." Photographer Todd Hido has made a career out of creating imagery that sticks with you, in part because it seems so familiar.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
'If you want to take a photo, you don't knock on someone's door to ask permission,' Todd Hido says. I've tagged along on one of his drives, sitting shotgun as he pulls off of main roads to take the 'unscenic' routes, so to speak. It doesn't matter the city we're in, because he drives along the anonymous streets, choosing views that could be 'anywhere' in America, and, more importantly, 'at any time.' As always in his process, Hido is in search of something - 'insatiable' in that search, he says, 'even if I can't name exactly what I'm looking for.'

Published in 2001, House Hunting is, on the one hand, a portrait of a certain America at that specific moment in history: this is an economically downtrodden place, dark and empty homes with the dirty laundry barely packed, or homes with the lights on but radiating no warmth. Simultaneously, this is a portrait of America - and specifically, suburban America - from any contemporary post-war decade: a raw look at white paint chipping off of picket fences.

Hido's work has echoes of the '70s adolescence he spent in his hometown of Kent, Ohio, a city scarred by the 1970 shooting of four college students by the Ohio Army National Guard during a Vietnam War protest. Then again, the images resonate less for their relationship to the photographer and more for their ability to connect and identify with almost any viewer. These are reserved photographs, overwhelmed with emotion and history, but reluctant to say a word.

'I take photographs of houses at night because I wonder about the families inside them,' Hido tells me. 'I wonder about how people live, and the act of taking that photograph is a meditation.' House Hunting, therefore, is more question than answer. A rumination without resolution.

It would seem that in order for these pictures to exist, the photographer would need to be a voyeur, but Hido denies secrecy. He says he keeps himself obvious, even when shooting in the dark. When somebody calls the police, he is quick to make the distinction between photographer and criminal. 'You're allowed to take pictures in public,' Hido says. 'It's interesting that so many people regard their surroundings as inherently private. Hido heightens that sense of false privacy. Amplifies it, to show the cracks in the edifices.

The scale of House Hunting, 17x13 inches (43x35 cm), initially gave the artist pause when proposed by the publisher. 'I wasn't sure about it. I didn't want the book to end up crooked or shoved in someone's bookshelf.' Instead, the scale of the book demands a confrontation with its 26 carefully selected photographs, edited by Hido himself, a practice he insists on with each of his books. In so deliberately paring down the contents of House Hunting, Hido establishes how critical each photograph is in meaning and function. The physical experience of the photographs reinforces the emotional. In 2002, therefore, Outskirts was published as the companion book to House Hunting with the same size, shape, and page count.

Text by Katya Tylevich

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
'If you want to take a photo, you don't knock on someone's door to ask permission,' Todd Hido says. I've tagged along on one of his drives, sitting shotgun as he pulls off of main roads to take the 'unscenic' routes, so to speak.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Saul Leiter: 1950-60s color and black-and-white - Photographs by Saul Leiter | LensCulture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Saul Leiter started shooting color and black-and-white street photography in New York in the 1940s. He had no formal training in photography, but the genius of his early work was quickly acknowledged by Edward Steichen, who included Leiter in two important MoMA shows in the 1950s. MoMA's 1957 conference "Experimental Photography in Color" featured 20 color photographs by Leiter.

After that, however, Leiter's personal color photography was, for the most part, not shared with the public. He became better-known as a successful fashion photographer in the 1950s and 60s. All the while, Leiter continued to stroll the streets wherever he was (mostly New York and Paris), making photographs for his own pleasure. He printed some of his black-and-white street photos, but kept most of his color slides tucked away in boxes. It was only in the 1990s that he began to look back at that remarkable color work and start to make prints. His sense of color and densely compressed urban life represents a truly unique vision of those times.

The first European retrospective of Saul Leiter's street photography took place at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. The exhibition included one floor of black-and-white images, and another floor of all color. The color work is especially thrilling to see because not much of it had been seen before-and it is all wonderful and quirky and surprisingly fresh. A book just published by Steidl coincides with this retrospective, and includes more than 100 black-and-white and color photographs.

Leiter, who is 84 and still quite active, came to Paris for the opening of his show. He is humble and unassuming and intensely curious about things around him. In an interview for the new book, he said:

"I started out as a fashion photographer. One cannot say that I was successful but there was enough work to keep me busy. I collaborated with Harper's Bazaar and other magazines. I had work and I made a living. At the same time, I took my own photographs.

"I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way. Being ignored is a great privilege. That is how I think I learnt to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything."

At the exhibition press conference held in Paris, Leiter confided that he often purchased inexpensive color film that was past its expiration date: he loved to be surprised by the odd shifts in color that would result. He also told funny stories about Robert Frank and his friend Diane Arbus. "Robert complained to me one morning over breakfast at the L&M that he was going back to Switzerland because there was nothing interesting to photograph in America!" (at this point Leiter paused to laugh) "Then he went out and made The Americans!" Leiter also recounted how he turned down Steichen's invitation to participate in the now-famous Family of Man exhibition: "It seemed to me that that exhibition was less about photography, and more about things that I wasn't sure of."

Art critic Roberta Smith wrote in 2005: "Mr. Leiter was a photographer less of people than of perception itself. His painter's instincts served him well in his emphasis on surface, spatial ambiguity and a lush, carefully calibrated palette. But the abstract allure of his work doesn't rely on soft focus, a persistent, often irritating photographic ploy, or the stark isolation of details, in the manner of Aaron Siskind or early Harry Callahan. Instead, Mr. Leiter captured the passing illusions of everyday life with a precision that might almost seem scientific, if it weren't so poetically resonant and visually layered."

The book by Steidl is stellar. It is beautifully printed and contains inspiring sequences of black-and-white and color photographs, some of which are shown for the first time. There's a good interview with Leiter, too. Highly recommended.

-Jim Casper

Editors' note: Saul Leiter passed away in November 2013 in New York City. His work continues to be shown in galleries and museums around the world and his work looks beautiful in book form. A feature-length documentary, titled "In No Great Hurry," was produced with Leiter before his death and is an inspirational portrait of this pioneering photographer.

Saul Leiter: Photos
Hardcover, 144 pages
Steidl & Partners (March 1, 2008)
English or French
Buy on Amazon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Saul Leiter: 1950-60s color and black-and-white - Photographs by Saul Leiter | LensCulture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Saul Leiter started shooting color and black-and-white street photography in New York in the 1940s. He had no formal training in photography, but the genius of his early work was quickly acknowledged by Edward Steichen, who included Leiter in two important MoMA shows in the 1950s.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Saul Leiter will be presented by Howard Greenberg Gallery from September 18 - October 25, 2014. The exhibition represents the first solo show of the artist's early black and white photography from the 1940s and 50s, and will focus on more than 40 images including many unique prints that have never before been exhibited. The exhibition coincides with the publication of Saul Leiter: Early Black and White, a two-volume monograph published by Steidl / Howard Greenberg Library, a new imprint at Steidl. With text by Max Kozolff and an additional essay by Jane Livingston, the volumes show the impressive range of Leiter's early photography. In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter, a documentary film directed by Tomas Leach, was released in 2013 to critical acclaim. More than 40 images including many unique prints that have never before been exhibited.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since its inception over thirty years ago, Howard Greenberg Gallery has built a vast and ever-changing collection of some of the most important photographs in the medium. The Gallery's collection acts as a living history of photography, offering genres and styles from Pictorialism to Modernism, in addition to contemporary photography and images conceived for industry, advertising, and fashion.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Color photographs - Saul Leiter Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Color photographs - Saul Leiter Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The 2006 release of his first monograph, Early Color, revealed radically innovative compositions and a groundbreaking mastery of color that permanently changed the history of photography.