Exciting news for Los Angeles fans of great photography: Casemore Kirkeby, the new gallery project from Stefan Kirkeby of Smith Andersen North and Julie Casemore, has selected Todd Hido as the subject of their inaugural solo exhibition. The show, entitled Todd Hido: Selections from a Survey, will take place at Paris Photo Los Angeles 2015 and is the perfect opportunity to savour the haunting, thoughtful works of this modern American great.
Why should photography fans be excited? Because Hido, who has featured in the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair and Wired and who has work in the permanent collections at the Getty, the Whitney and the Guggenheim, is one of the foremost contemporary American practitioners of the form. Over the course of an acclaimed career, his fascination with American suburbia has resulted in a totally distinctive oeuvre that makes us look afresh at a landscape that rarely receives the attention of great art. Fans of David Lynch — particularly Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet — will find much to love in Hido’s uncanny eye for the sinister mystery, glamour and darkness of these superficially unremarkable neighbourhoods and people. Frequently with reference to his own biography and childhood home of Kent, Ohio, Hido shares with the viewer his sense of the power and imperfection of memory; his work’s dark power often stems from that sense of mystery, beauty and loss.
The exhibition will include a number of never-before-shown works alongside some older classics, focussed on the photographer’s muse Khrystyna, a long-time feature of his tenebrous nightscapes, landscapes and domestic interiors. One of the constant and striking features of Hido’s work is his ability to create narratives both within individual pieces and out of the careful sequences in which they are displayed, and this exhibition will be no exception.
The renowned photographer’s work isn’t the only aspect of the site-specific installation that will make visitors think about the meaning and impermanence of space and architecture. It takes place in Paramount Studios’ NY Backlot, an eerily realistic recreation of Brooklyn, Greenwich Village and other iconic New York locales. It’s a spot-on venue for the work of an artist whose work demands compellingly that viewers think anew about the spaces in which they find themselves.
Todd Hido,
Untitled #11374-8145, 2014.
Archival Inkjet Print, ed. 1/3, 38 x 57 inches.
Todd Hido,
Untitled #10983-4622, 2014.
Archival Inkjet Print, ed. 2/10, 30 x 20 inches.
Todd Hido,
Untitled #10566-03, 2011.
Archival Inkjet Print, ed. 2/10, 20 x 24 inches.
Todd Hido,
Untitled #11389-2986, 2014.
Archival Inkjet Print, ed. 2/10, 20 x 30 inches.
Todd Hido,
Untitled #11385-1746, 2014.
Archival Inkjet Print, ed. 1/3, 57 x 38 inches.
