Todd Hido: Many Small Decisions
Many Small Decisions marks the 25th anniversary of House Hunting (Nazraeli Press, 2001), the book that helped define Todd Hido’s reputation for photographing the quiet edges of suburban and rural America. Presented by the Center for Photographic Art, the exhibition brings together his night time house images alongside recent collages and other works that extend the same uneasy, cinematic atmosphere that has long shaped his practice.
Hido has built his career around driving, looking, and waiting for images that feel slightly out of place, a method that has produced some of the most recognizable photographs in contemporary landscape work: dimly lit houses, glowing windows, empty roads, and interiors that seem to hold more absence than activity. The exhibition revisits that visual language while also showing how Hido has expanded it. His recent collages add another layer to a body of work already known for color, mood, and narrative suggestion. Across the photographs and mixed media pieces, the familiar American home appears less secure than it first looks. The streets are quiet, but they are not calm. The houses are occupied, yet the people inside often remain unseen.
Taken together, the exhibition reads as both a retrospective marker and a current survey of an artist who continues to find tension in ordinary places.
“I drive, I drive a lot. People ask me how I find my pictures. I tell them I drive around. I drive and drive and I mostly don’t find anything that is interesting to me. But then, something calls out. Something that looks sort of off, or maybe an empty space. Sometimes it’s a sad scene. I like that kind of stuff. So I take photos and some are good. And so I keep driving and looking and taking pictures.” (Todd Hido)
About the Author
Todd Hido was born in Kent, Ohio, in 1968 and wanders endlessly in search of imagery that connects with his own memories. Through his unique landscape process and signature color palette, he alludes to the quiet and mysterious side of suburban and rural America, where uniform communities provide a stable façade, implying the instability that often lies behind the walls. His photographs are held in over 50 museum collections around the world, including the Getty, the Whitney, and SFMOMA, and Les Rencontres d’Arles featured his work in solo exhibitions in 2019 and 2025. Hido has published more than a dozen monographs, including House Hunting, Roaming, Bright Black World, and Excerpts from Silver Meadows. Aperture published Intimate Distance: A Chronological Survey, with a revised and expanded edition released in 2025 in English, French, and Spanish. His cinematic approach to landscape photography evolved further through his two most recent monographs, Bright Black World and The End Sends Advance Warning. Hido is also an avid photobook collector and, over three decades, has built a notable collection of more than 9,000 titles. His work has influenced multiple Hollywood productions, including Spike Jonze’s Her, Sam Levinson’s Euphoria, Issa López’s True Detective: Night Country, and Jason Momoa’s directorial debut Chief of War. He also appears as a subject in On The Roam, Momoa’s HBO Max documentary on creative makers.
Todd Hido: Many Small Decisions
August 1 – September 13, 2026
Center for Photographic Art – Carmel, CA 93921
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