Hosoe Eikoe

photographer

Born Toshihiro Hosoe in 1933, the son of a Shinto priest, he was only 12 years old when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed by the United States during World War II, leaving unprecedented physical and psychological destruction.
Hosoe got his first camera at 18 and started taking pictures of Japan after the war. He changed his name to Eikoh, to mark the beginning of a new era.
Hosoe early interest was documentary photography. His photo of a young American child won first prize in the student section of the Fuji Photo Contest of 1952. He left the Tokyo College of Photography because he lost interest in documentary-style photography. While at the College, Hosoe was a key contributor to a new expressive style espoused by the Demokrato (Life) group that collaborated during the postwar era. Other members include Ay-O, On Kawara, Masuo Ikeda, Tatsuo Fukushima, and the spiritual leader Shuzo Takiguchi.
Hosoe started experimenting with dramatic photos, a style he kept throughout his adult life. His photos at this time tried to show the dark, post-nuclear side of Japan. The strong contrasts of black-and-white photography have also been a constant interest for the artist, who has only used color photography once.
Hosoe became a freelance photographer, in 1954. His book 35mm Photography was published a year later. It sold well, allowing him to travel throughout Japan. In 1956, Hosoe held his first solo show at Konishiroku Gallery. It was called An American Girl in Tokyo. It was a photo essay about an American girl and a Japanese man who fall in love and then get separated. The story was made into a radio drama and published in Photo Salon magazine.
In 1959, Hosoe saw a performance by Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of Butoh dance. Hijikata adapted Mishima’s novel Kinjiki, exploring its homoerotic themes. Hosoe helped found the successful photo agency VIVO and staged his second solo exhibition, Otoko to onna (Man and Woman), which shocked Japanese audiences and earned him international attention.
The exhibition included very large, fragmented nude portraits of Hijikata and his dance troupe. Hosoe called this “photographic theater.” That same year, Hosoe and Hijikata made the anti-nuclear war film Navel and Atomic Bomb on a beach in Chiba.
Hosoe also made other films, including Judo (1964) and Modern Pentathlon (1964) for the Tokyo Olympics. The next year, both artists returned to Chiba to create a new series called Embrace. Hosoe also found Bill Brandt’s Perspectives of Nudes (1961) and stopped working on Embrace for 10 years because he was afraid of copying the British artist.
Hosoe won the Japan Photo Critics’ Association’s “Most Promising Photographer Award” and began a successful working relationship with Mishima. Hosoe took photos of Mishima for the writer’s book of essays, The Attack of Beauty (1961–1963). Mishima was one of the first Japanese writers to be noticed in the West. His books often talked about the differences between Western and Japanese cultures. Hosoe took more portraits of Mishima, published as Barakei (1963), translated as Killed by Roses. Hosoe’s photos show the tension between pre- and post-war Japan and the body and mind. Hosoe called the series a “subjective documentary.”
The artist’s role is clear in works like Ordeal by Roses #32 (1962) and Ordeal by Roses #5 (1962). These pictures show Mishima with a rose in his mouth and tied up with a hose – this symbolizes a balance of eroticism and menace.
Mishima – Hosoe’s most celebrated collaborator – was also known for his interest in the human body. He wanted to be patriotic and was very focused on physical perfection. He committed seppuku [ritual suicide] in 1970.
Mishima died just as Hosoe was ready to release the new version of Barakei, so Hosoe postponed the release until the following year. The English translation was changed to Ordeal by Roses at Mishima’s request. The photographs in Baroque evidence the stylistic innovations of postwar Japanese photographers and reveal a level of photographic manipulation not seen until much later in other parts of the world. Many writers, such as frequent Hosoe commentator Mark Holburn, regard this publication as the artist’s masterpiece.
Other series, such as Kamaitachi (The weasel’s sickle, 1965–1968), Simmon: A Private Landscape (1971), and Kimono (1963), are private studies and metaphors for a changing Japanese society. His later works are cinematic and dramatic, playing on sexual discoveries, legends, and myths from his personal life. In the 1970s, Hosoe started showing his work abroad, including in the US. He also held photography workshops around the world. In 1972, Hosoe met Cole Weston, son of Edward Weston, and agreed to translate Weston’s Daybooks into Japanese.
Hosoe has used the human form, especially the nude, to explore identity and the spiritual self. The nude was not a common subject in Japanese art photography until the early twentieth century. Hosoe’s photos of Gaudi’s work in the 1980s show he thought Gaudi’s curvy designs were sensual. His book, The Cosmos of Gaudi, was published in 1984. a subject Hose studied since 1964. It included drawings and poems by Joan Miró.
In 1991, Hosoe got gallery representation, through Howard Greenberg/Photofind Gallery, in New York.
Hosoe is still an important figure in photography because of his teaching and workshops. He has been Professor of Photography at the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics since 1975.
In 1992, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego held a 30-year retrospective of Eikoh Hosoe’s work. In the 1990s, Hosoe also held photography workshops in the US, focusing on the nude model. His work from this period includes the series Luna Rossa (2000), which was photographed in Alaska, Colorado, and upstate New York. His work is notable for its use of darkroom techniques like solarization and masking, which produce unusual effects.
Hosoe has been the director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts since 1995. The Museum held a retrospective of his photographs in 2021.
In 2002, he was given a Special Award from the Photographic Society of Japan. In 2003, he was awarded the Royal Photographic Society’s Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship.
Hosoe died in Tokyo on September 16, 2024.

EXHIBITIONS AT OCHRE

BIBLIOGRAPHY IN THE LIBRARY