Todd Hido, born in Ohio United States, is formally recognised for being an American contemporary Artist as well as being a Photographer. As an artist he is now based in San Francisco where his works have featured in many top magazines and websites such as; Elephant, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazines and many many more. His works are displayed in private and public galleries as collections and he has over a dozen books published and is a world renound success. his most recent monograph titled Excerpts from Silver Meadows was released in 2013, along with an innovative b-sides box set designed to function as a companion piece to his award-winning monograph in 2014. His works mainly involve the photographing of urban and suburban housing around San Francisco however he has traveled around America to make many of his series. However he also does a series of portraits where he focuses on women He used to get a model and take them to a motel or hose which was nearly completely bare and slightly run down look to it and photograph them looking scared and as if they had been a subject sexual acts. However this was done in a positive way to bring about awareness.
I was most interested in Hido’s portraits as the context behind the reason to him taking his portraits of women links to the limitations of women and shows them as be subjective and lacking freedom even in the modern day, which relates closely to how women’s rights and how they are portrayed through photography have changed.
interview with Todd Hido
ANALYSIS:
The image by Todd Hido is of women in a motel room in america, she is seductively lying across the bed without trousers on. Just by stating what can initially be seen in the image we get a sense of what the narrative Hido is trying to display through his portraits. Tom Hido has made his name internationally from photographs that are conspicuously absent of people, has spent the last year clicking nude portraits of women in shabby motel rooms around the Bay Area. The images represent a mid-career gamble for Hido. Nudes are rarely the stuff an art maven will drop $10K for, much less if they contain elements of erotica, which Hido’s do. Or, perhaps, the art world will again hail Hido’s ability to capture the dramatic tensions inherent in the body, just as he did with households. this image is an example of the erotica which has recently been shown in his images. I think that this is showing showing a new and refreshing light that hasnt really been seen over the past few decades. His work, similar to what began to emerge in the 70’s, shows the sexual side of women and how they are objects of erotica. Tom Hido portrays the women to be seductive and although not nude in every image he portrays a lot of playfullness in his images and they seem to be very suggestive.
In terms of composition, Tom Hido’s portrait shows his skill as a photographer. He has cleavily placed the model just off the middle of the photograph. As she is slightly to the bottom left of the image, this way the photograph isn’t breaking the rule of thirds and also allows for a big amount of background to create a strong frame. I do think that it is purposeful that Hido has created this portrait in this way, the huge amount of framing must have been purposely done as it is technically to much but creates a very dramatic and intriguing image, as we are left wandering why it has been taken at such a distance when image similar to this are normally captured closer up. However it leads out mind to thin what the purpose of the image may be and i think that the model is so far away to show the distance that some women feel from society. Women subject to prostitution often don’t chose that life but die to poverty and background they are forced t live this erotic life which distancing them from society. However we are unable to really understand any more about the narrative behind the image as the walls are striped bare and there is nothing on the bed. The only idea we get of what is going on is the models body position.
Furthermore the colours of the image are very interesting. deep pink tones of the image emphasize a darkness in the image and how this isn’t a happy, simple scene to look at. The lighting is also crucial in this image. Women who are living these lives don’t tend to be showing what they are in broad daylight and showing a sense of erotica is usually in a dark environment. From the image we can understand that the direction of light is coming from a near window just out of the left side of the image. the window is not shown but we can see that the left side of the image is a lot brighter and well lit and as be move into the centre of the image the women casts a show onto the wall behind her and then on the far right of the image is really dark and underexposed. The photograph also has a depth of field. This depth in the image is created by the only three objects in the image keeping it simple and focusing out eye on the three things the photographer wants us to be considering for the narrative of this image. The include; the bed,the model and the room itself. Depth is created by the wall being in the far ground of the image, the model being just in front of the wall in the centre of the image and then the bed being in the fore ground of the image bringing layers to the image.
From analyzing Hidos work it has influenced my work by making me think about the use of natural lighting that i use in my images and how i could experiment with natural lighting but also maybe a spot lamp which would create a different sense of lighting in the images