Eikoh Hosoe

Eikoh Hosoe (細江 英公) is a Japanese photographer and filmmaker who emerged in the experimental arts movement of post-World War II Japan.

Hosoe is best known for his dark, High Contrast, black and white photographs of human bodies.

His images are often psychologically charged, exploring subjects such as death, erotic obsession, and irrationality.

He witnessed the firebombing of Tokyo in 1944 and his family was subsequently evacuated to his mother's village.

He returned to Tokyo where he was primarily raised.

In high school he was a member of the photography club and the English-Language club.

In 1950 he took a photograph of a little girl living on the military base he visited every week to take English classes.

While he was a student there in the early 1950s Hosoe joined "Demokrato," an avant-garde artists' group led by the artist Ei-Q.

In the late 1950s, after graduating from Tokyo College of Photography, Hosoe worked as a freelance photographer for photography magazines a women's magazines.

At this time he also began associating with other young, progressive photographers such as Kikuji Kawada, Shomei Tomatsu, and Ikko Narahara.

This image, Poddie Jawoski won him top prize of the student section in the 1951 Fuji Photo Contest.

After this, he decided to pursue photography as a career.

After high-school he attended to Tokyo College of Photography.

Hosoe first met Tatsumi Hijikata in 1958 when the latter's company performed an interpretation of Yukio Mishima's novel Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors), about secret homosexual desire.

The interpretation featured two dancers interacting with a chicken, a performance that Hosoe described as "ferocious."

According to curator and academic Yasufumi Nakamori, the encounter fundamentally changed Hosoe's relationship to his photographic subjects in which Hosoe "began to view himself as involved in the creation of a distinct space and time."

Hosoe cofounded the "Vivo" collective in 1959, which takes its name from the Esperanto word for "life."

Some of his photographs reference religion, philosophy and mythology, while others are nearly abstract, such as Man and Woman # 24, from 1960.

He was professionally and personally affiliated with the writer Yukio Mishima and experimental artists of the 1960s such as the dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, though his work extends to a diversity of subjects.

His photography is not only notable for its artistic influence but for its wider contribution to the reputations of his subjects.

At birth Hosoe's name was "Toshihiro" (敏廣); he adopted the name "Eikoh" after World War II to symbolize a new Japan.

In 1960, Hosoe created the Jazz Film Laboratory (Jazzu Eiga Jikken-shitsu) with Shuji Terayama, Shintaro Ishihara, and others.

The Jazz Film Laboratory was a multidisciplinary artistic project aimed at producing highly expressive and intense works such as Hosoe's 1960 short black and white film Navel and A-Bomb (Heso to genbaku).

Art historian and curator Alexandra Munroe describes that the group was "Anti-tradition, anti-authority, and opposed Social Realism" and "deliberately rejected common sense" and "the conventions of a rigid society."

Other notable artistic affiliations of the time include Daido Moriyama, who worked as Hosoe's assistant in 1961.

In the sixties Hosoe traveled abroad yearly, seeing the art of the Fluxus group in New York and of Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona.

Gaudi's architecture would become an important subject for Hosoe's photographs.

Hosoe began working with Hijikata, first on a brochure of photographs that would be featured in Hosoe's first major collection, Man and Woman in 1961.

This led to their well-known Killed by Roses or Ordeal by Roses (Bara-kei, 薔薇刑, 1961–1962).

In 1968 Tadanori Yokoo designed the poster for Kamaitachi, which was both an exhibition and published in book form.

Kamaitachi was also included a danced component choreographed and performed by Hijikata at Nikon Salon in Tokyo for the photographic exhibition's opening.

Man and Woman, Hosoe and Hijikata's first photographic collaboration, was seen by Hijikata's friend Yukio Mishima, who asked Hosoe for photographs to feature in his collection of essays.

The subsequent result was "The Assault of Beauty."

After this, Hosoe asked Mishima to model for him.

It is reported that Mishima said to Hosoe, "I will give myself up to you as the subject matter for your camera. I want you to feel free to use me as you see fit and take whatever images your vision suggests."

The two subsequently traveled together to Hijikata's home prefecture of Akita on multiple occasions during which their collaboration Kamaitachi (1969) came to fruition.

Hosoe shot Kamaitachi with Hijikata as a model, a series of images that reference stories of a supernatural being—a "sickle-toothed weasel"—that haunted the Japanese countryside of Hosoe's childhood.

Munroe describes the kamaitachi as "a small invisible animal that was believed to attack people in the rice paddies at night. When it struck, a person would find his limbs and flesh sliced as if by a flying blade, but strangely, the wounds were bloodless."

In the photographs, Hijikata is seen wandering ghost-like within the stark landscape, confronting farmers and children.

Initially playing the role of the Fool, by the end of the series Hijikata is seen ominously carrying off a young boy.