Todd Hido American, b. 1968

A woman stands with her back to us in a red dress, and the red is the only thing here that has been given any light. Her dark hair falls across the shoulders and runs straight into a dark sky. Beyond her a bay lies flat and still at dusk: a low black shore, a distant headland, a band of orange along the horizon under deep blue. At the far left edge, a thin mast and its reflection in the water.

The flash has picked out the dress and left everything else alone. The sleeves, the folds at the elbow, the seam down the back are all sharply lit and a little too saturated, while the bay behind her is available light from another world entirely. Two exposures in one frame, and the join is her hair, which has been allowed to belong to the dark half.

We are given a back, a fall of cloth and a colour, and refused a face. That is the whole transaction. Hido built his name on lit windows and rented rooms, and this is the same move performed on a person: come close enough to start a story, withhold the one thing that would finish it. She is looking out at the water. What she looks like is not on offer, and the photograph is entirely calm about that.