Art News

Stephen Wirtz Gallery Displays New Photographs by Todd Hido

artwork: Todd Hido - "Untitled #10106", 2011 - Chromogenic print - Available in various editions - Courtesy Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco On view in "Excerpts from Silver Meadows" until February 25th 2012.


San Francisco, California.- Stephen Wirtz Gallery is pleased to present “Excerpts from Silver Meadows”, an exhibition of new photographs by Todd Hido, on view at the gallery until February 25th 2012. Sequenced to form an almost cinematic narrative, atmospheric landscapes of in-between, and isolated places in America provide the setting, and portraits of female subjects, broken starlets in suburban dress, stand in as the main characters. While the subject matter is mined from Hido’s own experience growing up in Kent, Ohio, what results is a collectively familiar, yet entirely imaginary and dreamlike melodrama untethered from a specific time and place, a visual pulp novel of Midwest mythology. Silver Meadows itself is a real place—a modest Midwestern suburban development that grew and pushed into former farmland on the outskirts of Kent.  The setting of Hido’s childhood, it also became the creative wellspring for his work. Compelled to contend with his personal history, Hido wanders deliberately yet randomly in search of imagery that connects with his recollections.