"There is no doubt that this work is about the physical nature of the climate change that is occurring now. Although many people are in total denial about this change, it is happening much faster than expected."
This September, Les filles du calvaire is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of the American photographer Todd Hido: Light from Within. The artist offers the gallery an exceptional body of work from the Houses at Night series that made him famous. Added to this body of work is the Bright Black World series, which always addresses with strength and beauty the tragic question of our changing landscapes. Some emblematic portraits of his work punctuate this panorama. At the same time, the book of House Hunting is reissued by Nazraeli Press.
House Hunting is the perfect image of Todd Hido's artistic and physical wanderings as he drove across America to capture its mystery. The subject is clear, titled without embellishment: houses seen at night. Yet the treatment of the image, so recognizable, leads the viewer towards a more romantic symbolism, tinged with a certain nostalgia. His artistic filter is misty like the mind. To make our imagination more fertile and stimulate our projections, the presence of the man is only implicit. No silhouette in shadow. This absence reinforces the mysterious charge of the work and we guess from the only glow that escapes that these houses are inhabited.
With Bright Black World, Todd Hido leaves the American suburbs to explore the desolate landscapes of northern Europe. The psychological geography and the interpretation are quite different: if he still plays here with the aesthetic duality that characterizes him between strangeness and sublime, light and shadow, the planet he describes is now a post-apocalyptic unknown territory. The humanity suggested in House Hunting has disappeared into the darkness, condemned by its own mistakes.
"There is no doubt that this work is about the physicality of the climate change that is now occurring. Although many people are in total denial of this change, it is happening much faster than anyone expected." Todd Hido.
