Todd Hido

House Hunting is Hido’s most widely recognized body of work, and the series has been exhibited and acquired by the Guggenheim Museum, SFMoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Smithsonian, among others.

Published in 2001, House Hunting is, on the one hand, a portrait of a certain America at that specific moment in history: this is an economically downtrodden place, dark and empty homes with the dirty laundry barely packed, or homes with the lights on but radiating no warmth. Simultaneously, this is a portrait of America — and specifically, suburban America — from any contemporary post-war decade: a raw look at white paint chipping off of picket fences.

Hido’s work has echoes of the ’70s adolescence he spent in his hometown of Kent, Ohio, a city scarred by the 1970 shooting of four college students by the Ohio Army National Guard during a Vietnam War protest. Then again, the images resonate less for their relationship to the photographer and more for their ability to connect and identify with almost any viewer. These are reserved photographs, overwhelmed with emotion and history, but reluctant to say a word.

‘I take photographs of houses at night because I wonder about the families inside them,’ Hido tells me. ‘I wonder about how people live, and the act of taking that photograph is a meditation.’ House Hunting, therefore, is more question than answer. A rumination without resolution.

It would seem that in order for these pictures to exist, the photographer would need to be a voyeur, but Hido denies secrecy. He says he keeps himself obvious, even when shooting in the dark. When somebody calls the police, he is quick to make the distinction between photographer and criminal. ‘You’re allowed to take pictures in public,’ Hido says. ‘It’s interesting that so many people regard their surroundings as inherently private. Hido heightens that sense of false privacy. Amplifies it, to show the cracks in the edifices.

— Text by Katya Tylevich