Todd Hido Ruined My Photograph
Do you like that title?
Provocative? Yes!
Clickbaity? A little!
Misleading? Almost certainly!
I watched the Todd Hido episode of the Jason Momoa/MAX show On the Roam. If you are a photographer (or a fan of photography) you may have watched it, or at the very least heard about it. It was on everyone's radar for a few weeks, mostly because of how strange it was to see Aquaman become an unhinged fanboy whenever he was around Todd. It was …. weird, but fun. I enjoyed it because Momoa seems like a sweet, sincere guy and it was a great look at Hido’s process. I loved getting to watch him go house-hunting. It was also informative to find out that I had been pronouncing his name correctly until someone told me I wasn’t, so I started saying it wrong, and now we are back to where we started (it’s Hi-Dough).
Watching the episode got me thinking about the first time I saw one of his photographs. I was in Jen Bekman gallery on Spring Street. There was a postcard for an upcoming group show he was a part of. On the card was a photo I loved immediately. It’s of a road in the snow. It is not a beautiful landscape, but rather a normal, plowed suburban road, shot through a dirty windshield. I had a similar reaction to seeing it that Jason Momoa describes the first time he saw Hido’s photographs (he and I are very much alike and people say that all the time). I felt like I already knew the photograph, because his photographs are a memory.
Skip ahead many years and I’m driving around rural Connecticut in the rain and fog looking for pictures. I remembered a spot I’d seen the previous summer where there was a basketball hoop on a small lakefront beach. I liked how the hoop looked, the lake behind it, with a small island in the center, the trees nearby framing the scene.
I don’t usually mind shooting in the rain, I actually kind of like it, but I noticed I could get to my spot without getting out of the car, which at the time felt very lucky. I rolled up to the spot and I looked through my camera at the court, without putting down my window. I had a moment of recognition of all of the great Hido photos taken through wet and smeared windows. I shot a few frames, seeing the blur of the drops on the glass. I felt like I’d taken a pretty good photo there, so I moved on to something I’d noticed nearby, something no photographer can resist: a covered car. I blame that Robert Frank photo with the palm trees for that.
When I processed this shot later, I knew pretty much immediately that I had messed up. I should have taken 20 seconds to get out of the car and shoot it without the glass. I probably could have even done it with the window down. The magic of the smudged glass you see in all those Hido prints? That’s not what this was. I don’t know if it has to do with shooting through the passenger window instead of the windshield, or if it was just not enough smudge. When I look at the photo I do some clone stamping in my mind, I want to clean it up. I think the real problem comes from the fact that it doesn’t look like it’s in a spot that should be taken from a car. Hido’s are clearly from a car in a place where a car should be. They’re taken through glass smeared by wipers, of roads and weather, dirt, and power lines. This feels like I drove onto a basketball court or shot through the window of a home with a driveway in a terrible spot. It doesn’t work. The photo is fine. It would be better. I’m not sure it would ever be great. It is good enough that I decided to go back another day and reshoot it. A few years later, on a beautiful rainy and foggy morning, I drove back to the lake. When I arrived I found that they had completely redone the court, changing its orientation to the lake. I tried to recreate it, but at the new angle, I couldn’t see the island, and that was always my favorite part. So this is the shot. Oh well.
We are all influenced by other photographers all the time. It is often a good thing, giving us new inspiration and motivation. Sometimes it is more of an unconscious thing, we don’t think about it but our influences shape our decisions and style. Other times, Todd Hido ruins your photograph.
Travis
While writing this I was listening to this Velvet Underground playlist I made and named The Velvet Underpants:
Thank you Travis - I did not know about Robert Frank’s covered car image. But I recently found myself taking pictures of three covered cars, so now it all makes sense!
I can't believe he did this to you.