Before sunrise

 

«I drive, I drive a lot. People ask me how I find my pictures. I tell them I drive around. I drive and drive and I mostly don’t find anything that is interesting to me. But then, something calls out. Something that looks sort of off or maybe an empty space. Sometimes it’s a sad scene. I like that kind of stuff. So I take the photos and some are good. And so I keep driving and looking and taking pictures.» The ease with which Todd Hido talks about his work as a photographer is reflected on the apparent familiarity of his shots, a sense of sharing and belonging that captures the superficial observer, while crawling on the bottom there is something else more complex, structured as a narrative. Hido’s houses are never empty, they hide internally entire real lives, guarded jealously yet betrayed by few sketchy clues, they stand in the dark releasing dim yellow lights of bedrooms and kitchens and living rooms, while outside the cold and the night siege merciless. What comes out are paintings with a perfect composition and a powerful emotionality, as frames suspended in time well away from any sentimentality and purely aesthetic temptations.

 

 

Photo:

© Courtesy of Todd Hido

www.toddhido.com

(click on the image at right for more pictures)