September 2014
"Unknown" Featured in ARTnews
29/09/14
Lead article in September 2014 ARTnews features three images from “Unknown” (including the magazine’s cover) and mentions the show as one of the current exhibitions dealing with the issue of privacy and artist’s rights.
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ArtNewsArticle Read More...Boston Globe Reviews "Silver Meadows"
16/09/14
In Todd Hido’s photographs, place and state of mind intersect
(This show was organized by Transformer Station and premiered there May 24 - August 24, 2013)
By Mark Feeney | GLOBE STAFF SEPTEMBER 16, 2014
Is Silver Meadows a place that’s a state of mind, or a state of mind that’s a place — and which is more real? Silver Meadows the actual place is a section of Kent, in northern Ohio. Silver Meadows the state of mind is a section of photographer Todd Hido’s imagination. The intersection between the two might best be described as a demonstration that sense of place can be spiritual as well as geographic.
Hido grew up in Kent. He grew away from there too. He now lives in the Bay Area. Both experiences, residence and rejection, deeply inform “Todd Hido: Excerpts From Silver Meadows.” The show runs at Boston University Art Gallery through Oct. 19.
Hido has described Silver Meadows as “a loose, fictitious place based on inadequate memory.” When is memory ever adequate — or, for that matter, not at least partly fictive? The more than 100 photographs that make up the show suggest a feeling of connection that could come only from someone who grew up there — and a feeling of revulsion that could come only from someone who fled. These images, which in so many ways are about the workings of memory, are a reminder of the truism that the past is another country. Among the questions they raise is the citizenship status of this particular resident of that particular country. Read More...
(This show was organized by Transformer Station and premiered there May 24 - August 24, 2013)
By Mark Feeney | GLOBE STAFF SEPTEMBER 16, 2014
Is Silver Meadows a place that’s a state of mind, or a state of mind that’s a place — and which is more real? Silver Meadows the actual place is a section of Kent, in northern Ohio. Silver Meadows the state of mind is a section of photographer Todd Hido’s imagination. The intersection between the two might best be described as a demonstration that sense of place can be spiritual as well as geographic.
Hido grew up in Kent. He grew away from there too. He now lives in the Bay Area. Both experiences, residence and rejection, deeply inform “Todd Hido: Excerpts From Silver Meadows.” The show runs at Boston University Art Gallery through Oct. 19.
Hido has described Silver Meadows as “a loose, fictitious place based on inadequate memory.” When is memory ever adequate — or, for that matter, not at least partly fictive? The more than 100 photographs that make up the show suggest a feeling of connection that could come only from someone who grew up there — and a feeling of revulsion that could come only from someone who fled. These images, which in so many ways are about the workings of memory, are a reminder of the truism that the past is another country. Among the questions they raise is the citizenship status of this particular resident of that particular country. Read More...
ARTFORUM Critic's Pick: "Silver Meadows"
15/09/14
Todd Hido
(This show was organized by Transformer Station and premiered there May 24 - August 24, 2013)
AUTHOR: COLE TRACY
09.05.14-10.19.14 Boston University Art Gallery
Todd Hido’s current exhibition, “Excerpts from Silver Meadow,” pursues a disjointed narrative about midwestern suburbia in the 1960s and ’70s. From the puzzle pieces—nearly one hundred photographs, pulp novels, and ephemera—we discover an anxiously normal boy with a dark side. The uneven sizing and hanging of the images augment this collage effect, with the works by turns manifesting fear, banality, and lust. Many of the blurred landscapes taken from inside a car bleakly outline a particular upbringing—Hido’s own. In fact, the show as a whole productively commingles the tale of a fictionalized character and a re-creation of the artist’s upbringing in Kent, Ohio.
In one grouping, a reproduction of a torn and taped photo of a woman with her dress yanked up is positioned between a photo of a handwritten notecard showing the measurements of a young man’s body, and a black-and-white photo of two boys playing in front of a suburban house. In another cluster, the viewer finds a decomposing, yellowing home; a fallen red tricycle (in a tribute to Eggleston); a lushly wallpapered interior desolate of objects aside from an off-the-hook telephone; and a final, fading memory from a fragment of a party banner: COME HOME.
Hido also has a propensity for voyeuristic night imagery. In #7373, 2009, tire treads in light snow lead up to a darkened home in which only a room on the second floor is illuminated. This image also appears on the cover of a Vintage reissue edition of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories (1989), which is displayed in a vitrine alongside novels such as Sin Drenched and Driven Desire. Throughout, the small-town vernacular of Hido’s American landscapes becomes charged with a compelling friction.
(This show was organized by Transformer Station and premiered there May 24 - August 24, 2013)
AUTHOR: COLE TRACY
09.05.14-10.19.14 Boston University Art Gallery
Todd Hido’s current exhibition, “Excerpts from Silver Meadow,” pursues a disjointed narrative about midwestern suburbia in the 1960s and ’70s. From the puzzle pieces—nearly one hundred photographs, pulp novels, and ephemera—we discover an anxiously normal boy with a dark side. The uneven sizing and hanging of the images augment this collage effect, with the works by turns manifesting fear, banality, and lust. Many of the blurred landscapes taken from inside a car bleakly outline a particular upbringing—Hido’s own. In fact, the show as a whole productively commingles the tale of a fictionalized character and a re-creation of the artist’s upbringing in Kent, Ohio.
In one grouping, a reproduction of a torn and taped photo of a woman with her dress yanked up is positioned between a photo of a handwritten notecard showing the measurements of a young man’s body, and a black-and-white photo of two boys playing in front of a suburban house. In another cluster, the viewer finds a decomposing, yellowing home; a fallen red tricycle (in a tribute to Eggleston); a lushly wallpapered interior desolate of objects aside from an off-the-hook telephone; and a final, fading memory from a fragment of a party banner: COME HOME.
Hido also has a propensity for voyeuristic night imagery. In #7373, 2009, tire treads in light snow lead up to a darkened home in which only a room on the second floor is illuminated. This image also appears on the cover of a Vintage reissue edition of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories (1989), which is displayed in a vitrine alongside novels such as Sin Drenched and Driven Desire. Throughout, the small-town vernacular of Hido’s American landscapes becomes charged with a compelling friction.