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Active elements at play, in toil, and in retreat, seeking peace.
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"as work in progress: treasures found in the streams around me."
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Safe places to view from.
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Living in fragments, pieced together in varied ways, uncertainly, and yet...
Inside there is a familiar chaos, awaiting a key...
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"Living in fragments, pieced together in varied ways, uncertainly, and yet...
Inside there is a chaos of sounds, but there is no key yet to unlock them."
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Common spaces, veiled through distances of varying sorts, living within the constraints of our fixed positions.
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A shrine made by many in honor and memory of Lucas Wheeler. Finding a place in our hearts that meets him in nature.
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Hopes and Dreams in the waking world and beneath it.
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"An hommage to the fantastic, provided by others in art and life. Iceland summer 2017, thank you to the family, especially Sarah Bergman." - Robert Todd
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Entering the envelope of life, and floating within its many layers.
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A bed of flowers.
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Entering and exiting a season.
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Windows into dreams and mythologies, interrupted peacefully.
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Calls and their echoes, forms in repose and in motion, rest and unrest, attempts at silence in the face of disquiet.
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Changing winds, shifting moods, stirring, awaiting…
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A family portrait, summer 2017
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Made on Peddocks Island with members of the AGX Film Collective.
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Three parts of The City – overlapping in Play.
Providing a space to come together as we stand (and walk) apart, a reflection of our fragmented worlds that seem to overlap, a shared illusion of community, here rendered harmoniously.
(all layering created in the camera)
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Shot from the perspective of an avian observer, Robert Todd’s camera traces pathways and patterns that exist on the street but to which we rarely pay any attention. The procedural nature of the way the camera scans the scene alienates our senses and implies sinister intentions.
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Flowers and their ways. (images cascading in the camera over the course of a single roll, on a singular noon)
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Milling about...
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Telling tales small and tall.
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An approach, a confrontation, a demurring bridled clowns and caged devils as friends, playthings, meat.
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This is the full uncut roll of footage I shot in summer 2016, some of which can be found in my movie, "MARKING TIME". But it features my nephews Lucas and Eli and their cousins Gus and Sadie at a dock in Westport, MA. Lucas is the taller figure, who has the most screen time (dancing!). Lucas passed away in his sleep in the early hours of September 11 - a devastating event for me and my family. "Unfathomable" as someone said, and it is true: I cannot seem to be able to consciously take in the depth of this loss. Lucas was the star and inspiration and writer for WEAPONS EXPERT DEMONSTRATION, and can be seen dancing with his family on the dock in color at the end of ECHOSYSTEMS (both on my Vimeo site).
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A concerto of small movements, found happening in late spring. Anticipation of a coming state of fulfillment, of ease, of utopia.
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Created with Deb Todd Wheeler, this is variety of mediated representations of layers of atmospheric penumbra, with sources for these miasmas ranging from plastic bags to power plants.
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Drawing up on drawing...(this is a first draft of a larger project, likely constructed a bit differently).
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Marking interactions between designs across natures.
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Distance is at issue in this final chapter of the “Human Nature” series, which speaks of our positioning of the landscape as a source for contemplation as being a form of consumption and thereby invoking claims of ownership. These hills, found within the coal ranges of Eastern Pennsylvania, are marked by our vision as both “nature” and “territory”, subject to varied forms of reverence and exploitation. The film continues OVER WATER’s theme of controlling elements of nature, here complicated (and obviated) by the use of the grid as a trope serving as a reference to not only the literal introduction of powerlines (the energy grid), but more generally to the utility of image in relation to function, the epistemological goals of mapping, and the aspects of control that are intertwined with ownership and consumption.
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A continuation of the NOON series, here in FOUR phases, locally.
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Somewhere along or between the borders of here and there, ...in time and in place.
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A way of considering Europe in the light of day.
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Panes are Planes,
A spring squall, as seen from the inside out and back again. and again.
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A dance in three-four time,
A formal display, facades and portals.
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Ghosts seen on a near daily basis, echoes of lives lost, and found.
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Glorious idealizations of reality: the fall of light onto our world as it crashes into the spectacular forms and formulas of ending.
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Somewhere along or between the borders of here and there,
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Summer......stages....light.
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Sketches made on errant paths discoveries made in the wild.
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We approach The Fall.
We follow the lines of life into darkness.
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Conversations in the light, awaiting entry to the warmth in the shadows.
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Figures grounded, seeking sunlight, and at sea, following varied directions.
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Part One of the "Human Nature" series. A presentation of contiguous landscapes that wind around Boston and Brookline, MA, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to create an aesthetically pleasing environment within the city. This monument-garden serves as an ostensibly permanent nineteenth century art exhibition promoting a romantic philosophy that positions “natural” elements as spiritual commodities, and furthers the Western notion that nature exists in service to humanity, subject to its aesthetic designs and principles.
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Day breaks, and watches as Spirit forms itself amid filterings of light.
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a film by robert todd
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a film by robert todd
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a film by robert todd
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a film by robert todd
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a film by robert todd
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Entering and exiting a season.
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a film by robert todd
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Moving through fall’s end and beginning, falling. - RT
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a film by robert todd
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a film by robert todd
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Part Two of the "Human Nature" series. A journey that unites and connects scattered pieces of an archaic architecture of water-related infrastructure in the Northeast, including piers, bridges, and canal locks.The film centers on these structures as designs for mastery over water that was once a hallmark of civil construction in past centuries, and presents hints of an equally archaic ideology that drives Western commerce.
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a film by robert todd
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a film by robert todd
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a film by robert todd
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The space around us. And sleeps again along the shoreline of day.
Assistant Sound Editor
Direct cinema pioneer Frederick Wiseman takes an in-depth look at the preeminent American university during a fall semester that saw a vigorous debate taking place over tuition hikes, budget cuts, and the future of higher education in the United States.
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A small universe unbound.
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The edge of a season, awaiting a crossing.
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The worlds I live in, conjoined. – Robert Todd
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Divided lights.
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Borderlands, facing East and South.
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Heralding Daylight.
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Director of Photography
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A way through, a path, a musical section, a means of entry. An exploration of languages.
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A way through, a path, a musical section, a means of entry. An exploration of languages.
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TEACUP - whoa......MY HAT!
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A week of observations along the waterfront.
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A week of observations along the waterfront.
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A week of observations along the waterfront.
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Short film by Robert Todd
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Searching for... The presence of absence, the unaswerable "where?" of being.
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A mysterious, amusing, semi-nostalgic ramble through a small town in Iowa gives way to what may be the U.S.S. Enterprise indulging in a bit of time travel. Dialogue contrasts the pleasures of the simple life with its hardships and the mere act of looking at a patch of mums is complicated by the addition of a loupe that both blurs and sharply focuses each flower.
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MASTER PLAN portrays various strata of “managed” housing in America, from individual homes to prisons, mixing accounts of the planners’ rationales for their designs with residents’ testimonies concerning the quality of life within these structures.
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A correspondence film: rolls of high contrast black and white film were sent back and forth in the mail over the course of a year until the film began to reveal itself as a science non-fiction fairy tale, a speculative quest – circling and searching, falling and landing, entering and exiting – to recapture elisions in light caught within and between seasons, states, planes and worlds.
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"A blind predator dreams through its prey's eyes."
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The spell cast by light rays eventually weaves back on itself. Rifts gently torn in the quiet space of a single afternoon...
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A silent epilogue.
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Movement through and into a special time of day. An hour of interior time.
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In Groundplay, Robert Todd uses his 16mm camera as a microscope. The sensitive instrument does not perceive objects, but dives into the empty spaces between them. The focus shifts to a new world filled with structures, grit and dust barely perceptible to the naked eye.
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Traces of the spring. A gathering of images.
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A place where we wait to find either transcendence or a path into ourselves that is deep enough to draw new life from. Here we wait...
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This film was shot on high contrast black and white film, the print for the film has the warm tint you see in this digital (HD) version.
Production Assistant
A visual essay about the progressive tradition of the United States as seen through grave markers and monuments.
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A film searching for life.
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A tale of 2 passages within the Spirit house. This is the first in a series that looks at the places we find our spiritual presence augmented, inflamed, or simply acknowledged.
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A tale of 2 passages within the Spirit house. This is the first in a series that looks at the places we find our spiritual presence augmented, inflamed, or simply acknowledged.
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Robert Todd short from 2007.
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This officescape reflects the rhythms of my mind from daybreak-to-break: light journeys within and without my office, in 3 movements: InnerClose with Shadow and Steam (Andante Up, Down, and Sidelong), Exterior Fantasy from Dawn to Break (Allegro in moving colors), and Hallway (the End of that World: the pyre lit, it roars to life, rages, and fades...) -RT
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Your Street is My Street.
A constricted frame in agitation...
...the sweet music of jackhammers raging throughout - with Intermission.
After nearly seven years of constant construction on my street, the road in front of my house was ripped up once again early one summer morning. A few days after they'd paved over the damage, Dig-Safe Marks magically appeared, signalling the start of yet another round of terror for the neighborhood, here vividly brought to life in unsparing terms.
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Play in 3 acts, a dance in 3 forms, 3 versions of paradise.
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Glass-fronted doors, items on display.
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In this film, people facing death or lives of extreme privation share their warmest memories and describe the good deeds they’ve done while living under the most difficult of circumstances imaginable. This intimate portrait offers a window, through their words only, into the inner lives of men and women living in maximum-security penitentiaries across the United States, most of whom are incarcerated on Death Row.
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‘This film looks at the nature of viewing nature and the problems we have created for ourselves in defining useful space: the contemporary act of viewing "landscape" requires an effort of wilful ignorance of our own position as present and influential, and what it takes to get to the point of being in a position to view it.’ (Robert Todd)
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In my former home-town of Rye, New York, individuals representing three different generations describe their experiences as artisans, craftsmen and shop keepers.
All consider their "businesses" as dying trades, and struggle to maintain their livelihoods and the value of their contributions.
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A self-portrait, as seen through various lenses and scapes, as heard woven within fragments of the voice of Robert Bauer.
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Peter Miller/R.Todd collaboration: Super8 text and image poetry. 2003
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A fantasy taking its cue from reliquary objects left to rot along the Brooklyn Promenade, overlooking the site of the former World Trade Center Towers. The film proposes visual similes between impersonal architecture and the language of mass production that define America's most pervasive global export: a living aesthetic culture of utility. Just as we can conceive of sentimental or spiritual offerings as disposable, so too are we led to identify our selves within that aesthetic.
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Goodbyes, with family and alone, in winter.
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"Todd's poetic documentary excavates the history of a family home that has been passed down five generations. It uncovers a sort of violence done in the course of carving up the land and trying to purify one's family histories." - Chris Gehman, Images Festival of Independent Film & Video, 2001
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Movement further in and along, through the surface of a light.
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A reflection of the eternal internal, rippling through and along with waves of light.
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A rediscovery of emotional colors drawn from an evolution of texture and value (shades of gray). Seeds of light feed on the luscious soil of darkness.
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Life shivers as the ground beneath and sky above tremble.
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A sequence of 10 images presented in 10 groups of 400 alternating frames. The primary image of a bird is gradually disfigured by the successive introduction of competing imagery, yet the overall field seems to have its own life.
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2 girls from 2 generations recount their feelings before during and after weddings that take place in the same church nearly 30 years apart. This film was shot with a Nizo S560 Super8 Camera originally purchased by my uncle-in-law in 1973 - he shot the 1974 wedding of his brother at a church in Schweimke, Germany with it. The flowergirls at that wedding were his nieces (his sister's daughters, Rebecca and Tessa). e gave the camera to me 10 years ago, and I shot the wedding of his brother's daughter at the same church in 2003. The Flowergirls at that wedding were my nieces, the daughters of Rebecca, the elder of the 2 flowergirls at the 1974 wedding.
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A lot. 6' Color, Sound
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Reveries from the inside out, taking cues from my surroundings and diving through to the other side.
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Heavenly Bodies by Robert Todd, 2016
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Film by Robert Todd
