MISSION, announces the wall in tall black capitals, the tail of some TRANSMISSION business the frame has cut in two; on its pole above, a motel sign is likewise edited down to TEL, the line over it ending in esta, Fiesta or Siesta, either way overpromising. HBO, adds a lightbox below, in case the last syllable of lodging is not temptation enough. Photographs crop, that is their nature, but here the cropping amounts to rewriting, and the address underwrites the comedy in slow commas: 14, OLD, HWY, 90.
Everything swims in a green you get only from certain street lamps and certain aquariums: the cinder block, the vines rummaging through the chain-link, the dumpster with its silver autograph, the bars on windows behind which, presumably, HBO is being received. There is a satellite dish up on the roof, angled hopefully at the sky. No people, of course. Hido’s America rarely needs them; the light is green enough to have broken Gatsby’s heart, and it falls on gravel instead of a bay.
He numbers his pictures instead of naming them, which feels right: names would pin down what the crops have set loose. Born in Kent, Ohio, long based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hido has had this seedy-tender night vision ratified by SFMOMA, the Getty, and the Whitney, and the archival pigment print carries its chlorinated palette at full, improbable saturation. Old Highway 90 is the sort of road you end up on by mistake and think about for years. Here it is again, still open all night.
MISSION, announces the wall in tall black capitals, the tail of some TRANSMISSION business the frame has cut in two; on its pole above, a motel sign is likewise edited down to TEL, the line over it ending in esta, Fiesta or Siesta, either way overpromising. HBO, adds a lightbox below, in case the last syllable of lodging is not temptation enough. Photographs crop, that is their nature, but here the cropping amounts to rewriting, and the address underwrites the comedy in slow commas: 14, OLD, HWY, 90.
Everything swims in a green you get only from certain street lamps and certain aquariums: the cinder block, the vines rummaging through the chain-link, the dumpster with its silver autograph, the bars on windows behind which, presumably, HBO is being received. There is a satellite dish up on the roof, angled hopefully at the sky. No people, of course. Hido’s America rarely needs them; the light is green enough to have broken Gatsby’s heart, and it falls on gravel instead of a bay.
He numbers his pictures instead of naming them, which feels right: names would pin down what the crops have set loose. Born in Kent, Ohio, long based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hido has had this seedy-tender night vision ratified by SFMOMA, the Getty, and the Whitney, and the archival pigment print carries its chlorinated palette at full, improbable saturation. Old Highway 90 is the sort of road you end up on by mistake and think about for years. Here it is again, still open all night.