Review by Paul Anderson •
Memories came flooding back to me as I paged through Todd Hido’s 2023 photobook The End Sends Advance Warning. When I was growing up in the upper Midwest, there were moments of a winter’s evening when the combination of cold, clouds, a blurry sun and the stillness of open spaces produced a uniquely melancholy mood. These emotions are eloquently evoked here in the photographs of Todd Hido.
The book is largely a collection of landscape and environmental photographs made between 2013 and 2023. These are images that you might be see while driving down a lonely back road at dusk, or while walking through fallow fields with poor weather closing in. The images feature flat, low horizon lines, obscured suns, desolate roads, abandoned houses, skeletal or misshapen trees, and lonely railroad tracks.
The tone of light is very important to these images, transforming what would otherwise be a mundane scene into one of magic – there is diffuse light coming through heavy overcast or fog, harsh outdoor light illuminating a patch of farmyard, blue light reflected off scattered patches of snow, the leftover glow of a sunset. Hido knows how to get the most out of these conditions.
These images are very introspective. You feel like you are looking into something – perhaps into oneself – rather than at something. The emotional mood and tone are contemplative. The images are sometimes starkly beautiful, sometimes cold, and almost always have a sense of isolation. Todd Hido includes a dedication to fellow photographer Larry Sultan, and that dedication says a lot about Hido’s approach:
“This book is dedicated to Larry Sultan, who taught me that I could walk up to sentimentality but not become it.”
My review copy of the book was loaned to me by a friend, and she noted that its strength lies in its collection. Each image portrays some specific mood, and sequencing through the collection combines these moods into a strong sense of foreboding. This brings us to the book’s rather provocative title, The End Sends Advance Warning. It suggests that the book is about endings, such as the end of a search, a dream, a Journey, or an era. The images point toward a reflective ending, and one of dark beauty.
Hido addresses the choice of title in an acknowledgement paragraph at the back of the book. The title, Hido writes, comes from an essay included in his earlier photobook Bright Black World. Hido states the following about the opening words of that essay, which was written by Alexander Nemeroy:
“That phrase [The End Sends Advance Warning] rattled around in my head as I made many of these images, giving formal shape to what had been until then only an untethered, wordless emotion in me. This book came to be not about The End, but out of necessity perhaps, a hopeful way to view the world and the beauty it contains.”
This is a large photobook, and the featured image on each page spread takes up most of one page. The large size makes them wonderful to look at. There are often smaller images or tip-ins placed on the opposing page. Part of the adventure of looking through the book is to decipher the connection between the main image and these accompanying images. The connection can be one of texture, tone, pattern, or subject matter. Also included in the book are two witty poetic quotes, one from Emily Dickinson and the other from Robert Creeley.
This book will be of interest to a wide range of photographers who will appreciate these well-crafted images.
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Other reviews of Todd Hido’s work in the PhotoBook Journal: Kin Subscription Series Number Two – Hido – Mueller – Soth – Nolan, One Day – Ten Photographers, and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s Third Biennial Reva & David Logan Photo Book Symposium
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Paul Anderson is a photographer/digital artist, working in Hermosa Beach, CA
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The End Sends Advance Warning, Todd Hido
Photographer: Todd Hido (born in Kent Ohio, resides in the San Francisco Bay area)
Text: English
Publisher: Nazraeli Press, copyright 2023
Hardcover, 14 x 17 inches, 104 pages, 80 plates; 9 tipped-in cards, laid-in vellum brochure, Printed and bound in China, ISBN: 978-1-59005-595-3
Design: Bob Aufuldish, Aufuldish & Warinner
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Articles and photographs published on PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s).
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