Eikoh Hosoe
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Template:Nihongo was 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. Some of his photographs reference religion, philosophy and mythology, while others are nearly abstract, such as Man and Woman # 24, from 1960.<ref>Honolulu Museum of Art, wall label, Man and Woman # 24 by Eikoh Hosoe, accession TCM.2003.31.29</ref><ref>Josef Chladek on Photobooks</ref> 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.<ref name=":3">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
BiographyEdit
Hosoe was born on 18 March 1933 in Yonezawa, Yamagata,<ref>Hosoe, Eikoh. Grove Dictionary of Art, 2000.</ref> one of three sons of Yonejiro and Mitsu Hosoe.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> At birth Hosoe's name was "Toshihiro" (敏廣); he adopted the name "Eikoh" after World War II to symbolize a new Japan.<ref name="Art2art2">Art2art Circulating Exhibitions. Eikoh Hosoe: ukiyo-e projections. Template:Webarchive</ref> He witnessed the firebombing of Tokyo in 1944 and his family was subsequently evacuated to his mother's village.<ref name=":1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He returned to Tokyo where he was primarily raised.<ref name=":3">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He is the older brother of the designer Isao Hosoe.
In high school he was a member of the photography club and the English-Language club.<ref name=":3" /> In 1950 he took a photograph of a little girl living on the military base he visited every week to take English classes.<ref name=":3" /> This image, Poddie Jawoski won him top prize of the student section in the 1951 Fuji Photo Contest.<ref name=":3" /> After this, he decided to pursue photography as a career.<ref name=":3" /> After high-school he attended to Tokyo College of Photography. While he was a student there in the early 1950s Hosoe joined "Demokrato," an avant-garde artists' group led by the artist Ei-Q.<ref name="Art2art2" /> In the late 1950s, after graduating from Tokyo College of Photography, Hosoe worked as a freelance photographer for photography magazines and women's magazines.<ref name=":3" /> At this time he also began associating with other young, progressive photographers such as Kikuji Kawada, Shomei Tomatsu, and Ikko Narahara.<ref name=":3" /> Hosoe cofounded the "Vivo" collective in 1959, which takes its name from the Esperanto word for "life."<ref name=":1" />
In 1960, Hosoe created the Jazz Film Laboratory (Jazzu Eiga Jikken-shitsu) with Shuji Terayama, Shintaro Ishihara, and others.<ref name="Ko-e2">Hosoe Eikoh 細江英公 (interview). Ko-e magazine, no. 6, January–February 2010.</ref> 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).<ref name="Ko-e2" /> 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."<ref>Barbara London, "X: Experimental Film and Photography," in Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (New York, NY: H.N. Abrams, 1994), pp. 285-306, 287.</ref> Other notable artistic affiliations of the time include Daido Moriyama, who worked as Hosoe's assistant in 1961.<ref name=":1" />
In the sixties Hosoe traveled abroad yearly, seeing the art of the Fluxus group in New York and of Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona.<ref name=":3" /> Gaudi's architecture would become an important subject for Hosoe's photographs.
Hosoe died in Tokyo on 16 September 2024, at the age of 91<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> from an adrenal gland tumor.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Relationship with HijikataEdit
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.<ref name=":1" /> The interpretation featured two dancers interacting with a chicken, a performance that Hosoe described as "ferocious."<ref name=":1" /> 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."<ref name=":1" />
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.<ref name=":3" /> The two subsequently traveled together to Hijikata's home prefecture of Akita on multiple occasions during which their collaboration Kamaitachi (1969) came to fruition.<ref name=":3" /> 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.<ref name="NYT20012">Loke, Margarett. Photography review; stories for the camera, some dark, some not. New York Times, 6 April 2001.</ref> 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."<ref>Alexandra Munroe, "Revolt of the Flesh: Ankoku Butoh and Obsessional Art," in Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (New York, NY: H.N. Abrams, 1994), pp. 189-214, 190.</ref> In the photographs, Hijikata is seen wandering ghost-like within the stark landscape, confronting farmers and children.<ref name="NYT20012" /> Initially playing the role of the Fool, by the end of the series Hijikata is seen ominously carrying off a young boy.<ref name=":2">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In 1968 Tadanori Yokoo designed the poster for Kamaitachi, which was both an exhibition and published in book form.<ref name=":2" /> Kamaitachi was also included a danced component choreographed and performed by Hijikata at Nikon Salon in Tokyo for the photographic exhibition's opening.<ref name=":2" />
Relationship with MishimaEdit
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.<ref name=":3" /> The subsequent result was "The Assault of Beauty."<ref name=":3" /> After this, Hosoe asked Mishima to model for him.<ref name=":3" /> 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."<ref name=":4">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> This led to their well-known Killed by Roses or Ordeal by Roses (Bara-kei, 薔薇刑, 1961–1962).<ref name=":3" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In these photographs, Hosoe created a series of dark, erotic images centered on the male body with Mishima dramatically posing.<ref name="NYT20012" /> The series was primarily taken at the writer's home in the Magome district of Tokyo between autumn 1961 and spring 1962. The photographs employ props such as a garden hose and a mallet to seemingly symbolic, yet ambiguous, effect.<ref name=":4" /> Mishima was pleased with the photographs, in part because of how they resisted straightforward or singular interpretations.<ref name=":4" />
Pleased with the outcome, the two decided to shoot together again.<ref name=":4" /> This time, Mishima told his wife to leave with their children beforehand, claiming the shoot may have negative effects on their morals.<ref name=":4" /> Occasionally featuring other people like Hijikata or the actress Kyoko Enami, these subsequent photos sometime evoke aspects of Mishima's favorite paintings by Botticelli and Giorgione.<ref name=":4" /> In the preface to the published edition, Mishima recounts, "The world to which I was abducted under the spell of his lens was abnormal, warped, sarcastic, grotesque, savage, and promiscuous . . . yet there was a clear undercurrent of lyricism murmuring gently through its unseen conduits."<ref name=":4" /> During this time, Daido Moriyama was Hosoe's assistant. He has recalled the complex and difficult darkroom technique he had to employ in order to produce the images that Hosoe had imagined.<ref name=":4" /> The compositing of negatives produces a dream-like or mythological effect, heightened by the stark contrast and suggestive imagery.
One of these photographs appeared on the cover of Mishima's "Assault of Beauty" (Bi no shūgeki) in 1961, a Kōdansha-published collection of essays.<ref name=":4" /> The following year, the photographs were exhibited at "Non," an exhibition organized by Tatsuo Fukushima at the Matsuda Department Store in Tokyo.<ref name=":4" /> The images were then published as Barakei in March 1963 in a large-format book designed by Kōhei Sugiura.<ref name=":4" /> The book was organized into five chapters: Preface, Daily Civilian Life, The Scornful Clock, or the Slothful Witness, Various Blasphemies, and Ordeal by Roses.<ref name=":4" /> According to Hosoe, Mishima had suggested a handful of titles from which Barakei was chosen, including "Death and Loquaciousness," "Passion Variations," "Sketches of Martyrdom."<ref name=":4" /> Mishima would later say that Hosoe's photographs enabled him to live in "grotesque, barbaric and dissipated" inner world, shot with "a pure undercurrent of lyricism".<ref name=":1" /> The work earned Hosoe considerable notoriety in Japan.<ref name=":3" />
In 1970 Hosoe had decided to republish the collection of photographs shot with Mishima as a new, international edition.<ref name=":4" /> This new edition was to be designed by Tadanori Yokoo.<ref name=":4" /> Scheduled for November, the release was postponed when Yokoo was involved in a car accident.<ref name=":4" /> Shortly after, on 25 November, the "Mishima Incident" occurred, ending with Mishima's ritual suicide by seppuku in 1970.<ref name="NYT20012" /><ref name=":4" /> Hosoe has noted that he did notice some unusual things at this time, such as the early completion and delivery of Mishima's preface for Hosoe's forthcoming collection Hōyō (Embrace), although Mishima's suicide came as a complete surprised to his friend Hosoe.<ref name=":4" />
Hosoe halted work on the second edition of Killed by Roses, unsure of how it would be received in the immediate aftermath of Mishima's spectacular suicide.<ref name=":4" /> A significant reason was that he did not want to appear to be taking advantage of Mishima's death for his personal gain.<ref name=":4" /> However, Mishima widow, Yōko Mishima, persuaded him to go ahead with the planned release, noting that her late husband had been eagerly anticipating its release.<ref name=":4" /> The edition was published in January 1971 by Shūeisha International.<ref name=":4" /> Hosoe has since expressed uneasiness about being too closely associated with Mishima and his legacy, although his works with the writer comprise an enduring aspect of the photographer's legacy.<ref name=":1" />
Later work and achievementsEdit
While Hosoe is often associated with Hijikata and Mishima for the influential, collaborative works he produced with them, he also photographed many of his other artist-friends. These include Simon Yotsuya, a cross-dressing dollmaker, and Kazuo Ohno, a Butoh dance collaborator with Hijikata who developed his own idiosyncratic style and performed until his death at age 103.<ref name=":3" /> One photograph captures Ohno, no longer mobile in his old age, dancing with his hands while seated in his wheelchair.Template:Fact
1992 saw a 30-year retrospective "Eikoh Hosoe: Meta" at San Diego's Museum of Photographic Arts.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The nineties also saw other activities of Hosoe in America, such as conducting photography workshops in various places that focused on the nude model.<ref name=":3" /> His own work from this includes the series Luna Rossa (2000), which was photographed in Alaska, Colorado, and upstate New York.<ref name=":3" /> The work is notable for its utilization of darkroom techniques such as solarization and masking that produce effects of an intensity atypical of his previous work.<ref name=":3" />
Hosoe was the director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Kiyosato, Yamanashi) from the time of its opening in 1995.<ref name="Ko-e2" /><ref>Shinjo Ito Center. Photography studio. Template:Webarchive</ref><ref name=":3" /> The Museum held a retrospective of his photographs in 2021.<ref name=":3" /> In 2002 he was given a Special Award from the Photographic Society of Japan.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography in 2003.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
PublicationsEdit
- Hosoe, Eikoh, and Yukio Mishima. Killed by roses. Tokyo: Shueisha, 1963.
- Hosoe, Eikoh. 鎌鼬 = Kamaitachi. Tokyo: Gendai Shichosha, 1969.
- Hosoe, Eikoh. Embrace. Ashi sonorama co, 1971.
- Hosoe, Eikoh, Tadanori Yokoo, and Yukio Mishima. Ordeal by roses reedited. Tokyo: Shueisha, 1971.
- Hosoe, Eikoh. 薔薇刑 = Ba*ra*kei = Ordeal by roses: photographs of Yukio Mishima. New York: Aperture, 1985. Template:ISBN.
- Hill, Ronald J. Eikoh Hosoe. Carmel, CA: Friends of Photography, 1986. Template:ISBN.
- Hosoe, Eikoh. Eikoh Hosoe, meta. New York: International Center of Photography, 1991. Template:ISBN.
- Holborn, Mark. Eikoh Hosoe (Aperture Masters of Photography). New York: Aperture, 1999. Template:ISBN.
- Hosoe, Eikoh. 鎌鼬 = Kamaitachi. New York: Aperture, 2005. Template:ISBN. Reprint edition.
- Hosoe, Eikoh, and Kazuo Ohno. Butterfly dream. Kyoto: Seigensha, 2006. Template:ISBN.
- Hosoe, Eikoh. Deadly ashes: Pompeii, Auschwitz, Trinity Site, Hiroshima. Tokyo: Madosha, 2007. Template:ISBN.
- Hosoe, Eikoh. 鎌鼬 = Kamaitachi. New York: Aperture, 2009. Template:ISBN. Trade edition.
- Eikoh Hosoe. London: Mack, 2021. Edited by Yasufumi Nakamori. Template:ISBN.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Further readingEdit
- Furuta, Miyuki. Why, mother, why?. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1965. With photographs by Hosoe.
- Lifton, Betty Jean. Taka-chan and I: a dog's journey to Japan. New York: W.W. Norton, 1967. With photographs by Hosoe.
- Lifton, Betty Jean. A dog's guide to Tokyo. New York: W.W. Norton, 1969. With photographs by Hosoe.
- Lifton, Betty Jean. Return to Hiroshima. New York: Atheneum, 1970. With photographs by Hosoe.
- Template:In lang Nihon nūdo meisakushū (Template:Nihongo2, Japanese nudes). Camera Mainichi bessatsu. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1982. Pp. 185–89 show nudes by Hosoe.
- Lifton, Betty Jean. A place called Hiroshima. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1985. Template:ISBN. (1990 paperback edition: Template:ISBN.) With photographs by Hosoe.
- Holborn, Mark. Black sun: the eyes of four. Roots and innovation in Japanese photography. New York: Aperture, 1986. Template:ISBN. Pp. 17–32 discuss Hosoe's Kamaitachi series.
- Nihon shashin no tenkan: 1960 nendai no hyōgen (Template:Nihongo2) / Innovation in Japanese Photography in the 1960s. Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 1991. Exhibition catalogue, text in Japanese and English. Pp. 46–55 show photographs from "Ordeal by Roses."
- Baudelaire, Charles. Flowers of evil. South Dennis, MA: 21st Editions, 2006. With photographs and an afterword by Hosoe.