Todd Hido

I'm really intrigued by Todd Hido's work. I had been familiar with his photographs of houses at night, but am much more interested after hearing him speak about them. the way that he photographs them transforms them from simply being a house on the street, to being a home with people living and moving on the inside. the small glimpses that he gives us of human life- a light on or a flickering television- bring so much life into the work and keep the viewer engaged.
I was not familiar, however, with any of Hido's other work before the lecture. I really took to his landscapes. they are really just the type of work that I am drawn to, especially his use of water on glass or other ways of photographing that add a similar romantic feel. Although, I related to his work more so when he spoke of childhood photographs, his family and the home and small town that he grew up in, and how they all influence his work today. I have a lot of the same thoughts about my own work, but he was able to explain it in a way that made so much more sense to me.
I enjoyed all the work shown by Hido, but none so much as his most recent portraits. I loved to hear him speak about the shitty instant camera he was using during the photoshoots, and getting a completely different aesthetic than any of his previous work. Where his large format film was expensive and saved for what he thought were his best shots, the childhood camera he used in between those shots produced something that I thought was much more refreshing and obviously less staged and meticulously thought out than his other work.