Life Outside the Classroom: Mr. Todd
Mr. Todd, Photography Teacher at the High School Division, is using his lens to document current issues, such as protests, and similarly the long-lasting impression of history on modern times. A great deal of his work focuses on the artistic, political, and economic aspects of the South. Having grown up in Louisiana, Mr. Todd stated that “When you’re trying to figure out your practice, you do a lot of self reflecting,” which would explain why much of his work is focused in the South. He was greatly inspired by his grandfather, who was an FBI agent stationed in the South during the civil rights era to track and arrest KKK members. In following his grandfather throughout the South, he would meet people such as Father Thompson, the first ordained African-American priest in Louisiana who reported racial injustice to the FBI.
Mr. Todd mentioned that there were remnants of people, “dealing with the cultural institutions that the South had held so dear starting to shatter and crumble” as civil justice became more prevalent. In his photography, he tries to capture and learn, “what Southerners identify with” – whether Antebellum racism or post-war social activism. One of his recent series, “Premonitions,” portrays the anticipation of the 2016 election in the South. This focus on the history is constantly recurring in reference to the South. Series such as “Premonitions” show the “residual history in the South and how it is visually evident”.
One of his favorite projects was in an archaeological excavation along the Berlin wall. Piles of rubble covered houses from Jewish ghettos, but some were still visible beneath the rubble. It eventually became a “parking lot” for Soviet Tanks to prevent people from climbing the wall. At the time Mr. Todd visited, it was a sculpture garden. Again, the theme of “residual history” of a space or an object reoccurs. He set up and photographed scarecrows on either side of the wall, facing each other, showing the relationship between the past and the present history of the country.
Mr. Todd’s first project was while he was at Syracuse University. He created “The Urban Video Project,” which consisted of projections onto buildings. He explained that it was a way for people outside the university to experience video art.
Currently, Mr. Todd is working on photographing protests in cities across the U.S., such as LA and NYC. He started photographing protests when he was teaching at Cooper Union, where he photographed the people protesting the revocation of free tuition. He has photographed Black Lives Matter and equal rights protests, and more recently the protests against Donald Trump. Mr. Todd is interested in what a protest conveys, people coming together to voice their opinions in one space. People are coming together to express “their concern for whatever society is doing at the time”.
While most of Mr. Todd’s work is displayed in the South, it can also be seen in magazines, such as “Ain’t Bad Magazine,” or on his website here. Mr. Todd received his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Louisiana Tech University in photography and sculpture. He then continued on to Syracuse University for graduate school where he studied transmedia: a combination of film, video art, and photography.