On the first Thursday of September, Chelsea art galleries spring back to life after a quiet August - for gallery hoppers, at least. Last night, Bruce Silverstein Gallery opened a solo exhibition of recent work by Todd Hido to a big crowd that filled the generous space to overflowing. For those who mainly know his portraits of young women, photographed in anonymous hotel rooms, the photographs on view here are a departure.

Hido creates a surreal atmosphere of longing and loss that escapes nostalgia by virtue of a few simple choices: what time of day, what weather, what natural features (few and far between) he includes in the frame.

Three by Todd Hido from The Road Divided. Copyright the artist; courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery.

I caught up with Todd by phone this morning for an interview.

Peggy Roalf: What is there about driving around on dark days that leads you to the subject of your work - which seems to be a physical manifestation of loneliness and dislocation?
Todd Hido: That kind of moody day, when I wake up and look out the window, I'm compelled to go out and take pictures. Living out in California, in the land of blue skies, I find myself attracted to the opposite. I actually never shoot on bright sunny days.

PR: When did you begin working on The Road Divided and over what period of time?
TH: The pictures that are hung in the show are from the last two to three years. It's an extension of an earlier series called Roaming (ed note: mysterious landscapes generally photogtaphed under rainy skies and recently seen in New York at Julie Saul Gallery). I wanted to push the new series into a more painterly, atmospheric direction.

PR:  Are there any painters whose work has inspired your choices?
TH: I don't look at very much painting, but I know what I like when I see it. Gerhard Richter, for example and Turner {J.M.W. Turner, 1775-1851). In Turner, I like the way that you can feel the light and the air in his paintings.

PR:  In The Road Divided, you've traveled to unpopulated roadsides, visual wastelands, where nobody in their right mind would get out of their vehicle.
TH: I'm very much attracted to those kinds of places. There's a surreal quality and a bit of a thrill to be in a place where nobody else is.

PR:  You have used the book format effectively in the past. What do you feel are the possibilities offered by tuning pages that are missed - or different - with a gallery exhibition?
TH: A gallery exhibition and a book are obviously two completely different beasts. Each one of them has to be approached with a different point of view. What works in a book doesn't necessarily translate to the wall. But I often figure out the editing of my work, even for a gallery show, by making a book dummy. It slows down your pace. Turning pages is kind of like walking through a room.

PR: The prints currently on view at Bruce Silverstein Gallery are quite large, mostly 38-by-48 inches.. How do you adapt your thinking for the book page format?
TH: Large photographs on the wall in a large space invite viewers into the picture. With a book, when you're holding it in your hands, you're already in that space. I feel that a book, or anything that you hold, doesn't have to be monstrously large to be effective. Sometimes even a post card does the trick.

PR: What's the significance of the title: The Road Divided?
TH: I settled on this idea last October before Obama was elected - there was a real feeling of a divide across the country. And ironically, I feel that the present healthcare debate is more of the same, and were stuck in the mud.

PR: What's next for you in the way of books and exhibitions?

TH:  Nazraeli Press will be publishing The Road Divided in January 2010. And then in the spring, I'll be in a show at Houston Photofest, curated by Aaron Schulman of Seesaw Magazine.

The Road Divided continues at Bruce Silverstein Gallery through October 24, 2009. 535 West 24^th Street, New York, NY. 212-627-3930. Click to see a video of Todd Hido, produced by KQED San Francisco.