Todd Hido: Bright Black World

photography monograph for Todd Hido / Nazraeli Press
designed with Todd Hido 

Essay, The Weakening Eye of Day, by Alexander Nemerov

From Alexander Nemerov’s essay:
The artist knows the end like a hunter does a wounded animal. He knows where the stricken bear retires, down to the slather and stink. The artist is the general on the battlefield who anticipates his adversary’s thoughts, who broods with this foe beyond the hills, so that when the hostile fusillade blasts out, the choking deafness is no surprise. The artist is the detective who thinks like the criminal, who frequents the house of vice, draining the opiate spice. Down in the dregs, the artist is the upstanding person who begins to eat and drink and think like the killer he seeks: to know his sunsets and slickened pavements, the special emptiness he favors, the clouds that—for fun—he likes to rack and spread like specters, making mock of fog.

From Nazraeli Press:
For over two decades, Hido has crafted narratives through loose and mysterious suburban scenes, desolate landscapes, and stylized portraits. He has traversed North America capturing places that feel at once familiar and unknown; welcoming and unsettling. Underscoring the influences of Nordic mythology and specifically the idea of Fimbulwinter, which translates into the ‘endless winter,’ many of Hido’s new images allude to and provide form for this notion of an apocalyptic, never-ending winter. Exploring the dark terrain of the Northern European landscape and regions as far as the North Sea of Japan enchanted Hido, calling him back on several occasions. This newest publication highlights the artist’s first significant foray extensively photographing territory outside of the United States, chronicling a decidedly new psychological geography.

104 pages
17 x 12 inches