Todd Hido, #2479-A, 1999
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.”
