Fred Escher - Hiding - 1972

H-I-D-I-N-G is one of the best photo books of the 70s. The artist is in all the photos, he is the art and the artist. The artist and the landscape are one.

While living and teaching in Wisconsin in 1970, Escher was influenced by the conceptual photo books of two fellow teachers and contemporaries, Robert Cumming and William Wegman. Inspired to produce a photo book of his own though disinclined to take on the role of photographer, Escher asked his friends to take his photos and implored his students to develop and print his images. For his subject matter he used himself, “hiding” in visibly obvious spots - essentially hiding in plain sight: behind a mailbox, under a kitchen sink, or wedged beside a bedroom armoire. Escher’s photographs in book-form serve as a group of collective ideas. In writing about this work Escher states, “The book itself was to be hiding also – with the black cover, and the letters H-I-D-I-N-G dispersed within the book. Hiding the word Hiding.”
Born in Minnesota 1940, Fred Escher received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in1967. He is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2015) and a National Endowment for the Arts award (1980). Gallery and museum exhibitions include: Heskin Contemporary (New York); Phyllis Kind Gallery (New York); Nancy Lurie Gallery (Chicago); MoMA PS1 (New York); The Indianapolis Museum of Art; The Santa Barbara Museum; The Brooklyn Museum of Art; and the Walker Art Center. Escher’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Chicago Sun Times, The Reader, Art in America and Artforum. The artist currently lives and works in New York City and Oaxaca, Mexico.