Todd Hido

I was thoroughly impressed with Todd's lecture. I typically am not very interested in images that do not contain people. Maybe it is because I can then relate more easily to the image if there is a person. But with Todd's images of the houses and also the interiors of foreclosed homes, I found both a strong presence of people and a lack thereof and I found the combination of the two in his work interesting. In both cases it leaves you wondering what the person is either doing in the home, or why they left the home. The mystery of who that person is keeps the viewer engaged and lets them provide their own story instead of being shown exactly what the story is.

In the house series, I really enjoyed the environments Todd created out of preexisting environments. The colors he gets set the perfect mysterious mood and of course his composition leads the viewers eye to all the right places. I particularly enjoy the ones where there is snow on the ground because it gives the image a feeling of isolation. Also I enjoy the interiors of the foreclosed homes because again the isolation that one would have if they were alone in the room is an interesting perspective. Even being inside, one can still build there own narrative and they even have clues at times that are given by what the people left behind. A lot of the locations seemed to be somewhere I'd love to shoot at .

The only work of Hido's that I didn't particularly enjoy were actually his portraits. They just didn't have the same voice as his other works did. I wasn't nearly as impressed with his portraits as I was the homes and foreclosed homes. Normally I would say that this is pretty backwards, but his stronger work is definitely with his environments without the people. I even liked his actual landscapes more than his portraits, especially the ones taken at night in the alley ways and streets. Those seem to be more in his element.

Overall I was glad I attended this lecture. Todd seems like a super nice person and is definitely a great photographer!