Last night, the photographer Todd Hido spoke at the UT: CVA as the juror for the Toledo Friends of Photography's National Annual Juried Photography Exhibition. The show is up now at the CVA gallery and is a top-notch selection of contemporary practices and trends in digital and traditional photographs. As a juror he had the daunting task of editing down from 1650 entries to 83 images--- it is a wonder that as artists we ever get into juried exhibitions. Hido is best known for his house images-- haunting exterior views of anonymous yet personal homes-- minimal compositions with odd acidic colors. He talked (at length) about his images, his background, subject matter, process, and his influences including photographers Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Becher, and Walker Evans and painters like Edward Hopper, Gerhard Richter, and Mark Rothko. His work has a minimalist feel and a definite painterly quality. It is refreshing to see an artist take on admittedly "cliched" subject matters like interior lit houses, landscapes, and seedy portraits but do it in a daring and convincingly bold manner. He talked about being consistent but not repetitive, which he felt was a fine line to walk. He indirectly knocked photographers like Gregory Crewdson, by mentioning he does not create his work with a crew of sixty or stage his photographs in any way, amazing (he said that word quite a bit) as his photographs are formally similar to Crewdson's. It was a good presentation of his ideas and a range of his works-- check out his website for examples: http://www.toddhido.com/ and seesaw online photo mag for an interview:http://seesawmagazine.com/roaming_pages/roaming_interview.html. Inspiring and good stuff. As always I daydreamed about making new work.
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