Todd Hido is an American photographer born in Ohio and who for many years has been based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He received a BFA from Tufts University in Massachusetts, and an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts. He is currently an adjunct professor at the California College of Art in San Francisco. Todd’s images have featured in many publications, have been exhibited widely and are included in various prestigious public and private collections, most notably, Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco which holds the archive of all his published works. He has over a dozen published books to his name, including a mid-career survey entitled Intimate Distance: Twenty-Five Years of Photographs published in 2016 by Aperture, and his most recent monograph is Bright Black World, which was released by Nazraeli Press in 2018 and is already sold out.
In episode 103, Todd discusses, among other things:
- Discovering photography at school as a C and D student
- BMX as his first subject matter
- How the houses at night series began as an ‘establishing shot’
- Why he values his education as a commercial photographer
- His mentor, Larry Sultan
- The joy of being lost in the fog
- The influence of Jim Dow
- Collaborating with his female subjects
- His most recent book Bright Black World
Referenced:
- Robert Frank
- Larry Sultan
- Raymond Carver
- [Robert Adams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Adams_(photographer)
- Sally Mann
- Tina Barney
- Jim Dow
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“The thing that I always say about meaning and art is that the meaning of the image resides in the viewer. And I think that’s a really true thing. Like in music, what’s the meaning of a song? It means a thousand different things to a thousand different people. And there’s an intention of the artist, but that’s not always what’s the most important thing.”
Episode sponsored by PicDrop, The Charcoal Book Club and Findr.