



1 / 16 Chevron Chevron @Todd Hido, Aperture 2016 “#3972-b.”

The photographs gathered in Todd Hido’s new book, “Intimate Distance,” were made over the course of the last twenty-five years. During that time, Hido has worked on several substantial groups of pictures, often simultaneously, photographing landscapes, byways, signs, suburbia, interiors, fabrics, and faces. When each group has come into focus as a project, Hido has published it as a book and exhibited it as a suite of prints. But what we have here is a chronological sequence drawn from the full depth and breadth of his oeuvre. It’s not exactly a retrospective; instead, like a novelist reviewing his manuscripts or a filmmaker going back to the editing suite, this book hints at its maker’s development and working processes. We are invited to see how Hido (who was born in Kent, Ohio, in 1968 and came to photography through his love of skateboarding and BMX culture) has spiralled through his motifs and preoccupations. True to the book’s title, you will find several kinds of intimacy here. You will also find the ambiguous distances signaled by the titles of some of his previous books: “House Hunting,” “A Road Divided,” “Roaming,” “Between the Two,” “Outskirts.” Wandering through and around, searching and returning. If these photographs and their arrangement seem narrative, it is because they suggest untold tales and possibility. The suggestions are as much yours as they are Hido’s, and as likely to come from cinema and literature as they are from personal experience. Hido is an ardent movie lover who says that the TV in his house is always on. Impressions sink in and leave their traces, but even he is not sure what they are.

These photographs are made slowly—there are few grabbed shutter instants here—but like so much of the best photography, they seem to have been prompted by flashes of recognition, when the world-as-image corresponded to something half-remembered, unstated but insistent. The images are sumptuous and full of things to look at, but they give the equally strong impression that this factual-fictional world is less than full. Each image is plenty, yet not quite enough. For all the river of color, for all the thickness of these atmospheres, Hido has the economy of a minimalist.

Can one empty out a picture? How little does a photograph need? A road trip can be sketched with little more than a horizon and a telephone pole. The anomie of suburbia is all in the paint palette of a real-estate brochure washed in sodium light. A door with a number—216—is an unknown motel room, allocated at random. A young woman in such a room is enough to signal hope, fear, loss, or desire. Fill in the gaps as you wish; perhaps your unconscious has already.

This text was drawn from “Intimate Distance,” by Todd Hido, which is out in October from Aperture.