Todd Hido’s Atmospheric Photographs Transform Suburbia into Cinema

Jul 17, 2025

Matt Growcoot

A person with long dark hair, wearing a bright red dress, stands with their back to the camera near a body of water at sunset, with the sky fading from orange to deep blue. — Todd Hido, #11506-3940, 2016; from Intimate Distance (Aperture, 2025). © Todd Hido

Photographer Todd Hido’s work evokes the haunting atmosphere of Gregory Crewdson or even David Lynch, crafting ethereal images of suburbia that find beauty in the mundane and the uncanny in the ordinary.

Well known for his photography of landscapes and suburban housing, and for his use of detail and luminous color, acclaimed American photographer Todd Hido casts a distinctly cinematic eye across all that he photographs, digging deep into his memory and imagination for inspiration.

A vintage car is parked beside a wet, empty road at night, illuminated by a hazy streetlamp in the fog, with tall, shadowy trees lining the roadside. — Todd Hido, #3737, from Intimate Distance (Aperture, 2016)

A fluffy white Persian cat with bright yellow eyes sits on a brown carpet in front of a wooden-paneled wall, gazing directly at the camera. — Todd Hido, #1843, from Intimate Distance (Aperture, 2016)

Hido’s first book, House Hunting, came from driving around at night, exploring random streets and photographing houses that seemed isolated — looking for properties that could be found anywhere in America.

Now, a newly assembled, chronological album Intimate Distance: Over Thirty Years of Photographs published by Aperture, showcases ten years of Hido’s work, including new images from his travels to Iceland, Norway, and Japan.

Hido has published many smaller monographs of individual bodies of work, but this new tome gathers his most iconic images, along with several unpublished works, to provide the most complete and comprehensive monograph charting his career. The book is organized chronologically, showing how his series overlap in exciting ways. David Campany introduces the work and looks at the kind of cinematic spectatorship that Hido’s images demand.

A white wooden house at night with lights glowing from its windows, surrounded by bushes and grass, and enclosed by a white picket fence. The scene is quiet and illuminated by soft, ambient lighting. — Todd Hido, #2690, from Intimate Distance (Aperture, 2016)

“The photographs lead as far as human-made roads go. They reach the periphery of utility wires, footprints, and paths already taken,” writes Katya Tylevich. From exterior to interior, surface observations to subconscious investigations, landscapes to nudes, and from America to beyond, this mid-career collection reveals how Hido’s unique focus has developed and shifted over time. Assembled collectively in this volume, his familiar and new images demonstrate how the tension between distance and intimacy that he explores has remained constant throughout his practice.