Eikoh hosoe biography of barack

Eikoh Hosoe is one of Japan's most iconic post-war photographers, recognized for his legendary collaborations and impeccable aesthetics.

Born Toshihiro Hosoe, Hosoe’s childhood in Tokyo was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War when he was evacuated to Tōhoku in the rural north of Japan. Hosoe was fascinated by the post-war reality in which he came of age, going so far as to change his name to Eikoh in recognition of the new world he intended to capture with his camera.

Hosoe returned to study at the Tokyo College of Photography and graduated in 1954 to become a freelance photographer, gaining early exposure in camera journals and women’s magazines. He first garnered significant critical attention when he won the Fuji Film Award as a student in 1951, and was soon established as a prominent member of Tokyo’s avant-garde creative elite. After taking part in the legendary Eyes of Ten exhibition in 1957, Hosoe formed the VIVO group with fellow photographers including Shōmei Tōmatsu, Kikuji Kawada, Akira Satō and Ikko Narahara.

In his most celebrated photographic series Hosoe worked with a succession of highly influential creative contemporaries to deliver extended collaborative portraits. The series Barakei (‘Ordeal by Roses’) was born out of Hosoe’s friendship with writer Yukio Mishima, whilst in Kamaitachi Hosoe worked with iconoclastic ankoku butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata.

Hosoe was a leading member of several experimental artist collectives, including Demokrato and the multi-disciplinary Jazz Film Laboratory. He was later appointed director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts and has been Vice President of the Japanese Photographers Association since 1981. He has taught at Tokyo's School of Photography since 1969, and at the College of Photography since 1975.

Iconic Japanese postwar photographer Eikoh Hosoe, who gained wide acclaim for his boundary-pushing photographs of novelist Yukio Mishima, died in Tokyo on September 16 of complications related to an adrenal gland tumor. He was ninety-one. A cofounder—alongside Akira Sato, Akira Tano, Ikko Narahara, Kikuji Kawada, and Shomei Tomatsu—of the short-lived but influential documentary photography collective Vivo, he was known for noirish, high-contrast black-and-white photos of nude human figures. Through these sensual, intimate, often haunting images, he explored universal issues such as death, religion, philosophy, and the supernatural.“To me photography can be simultaneously both a record and a mirror or window of self-expression,” he explained. “The camera is generally assumed to be unable to depict that which is not visible to the eye. And yet the photographer who wields it well can depict what lies unseen in his memory.”

Born Toshihiro Hosoe on March 18, 1933, in Yonezawa, Yamagata, the son of a Buddhist priest, he spent the first decade of his life in Tokyo. At the age of eleven, having witnessed the World War II firebombing of the city by US troops, he was forced to flee to the countryside with his family. While living in Tohoku, the tiny village in which his mother had been raised, the adolescent Hosoe developed a fascination with mythology and the spiritual world that would inform his later work. On moving back to Tokyo, he joined his high school’s photography club, and in 1951 he won the top prize in the Fuji Photo Contest with an image of a young girl on a military base. He enrolled in the Tokyo College of Photography, and while studying there joined the experimental artist group Demokrato. The work of its leader, avant-garde artist and engraver Ei-Q, would prove influential to the young photographer. Following his 1954 graduation, Hosoe renamed himself Eikoh and embarked on a career as a

Eikoh Hosoe was born in Yonezawa, Yamagata prefecture in 1933 and was brought up in Tokyo. In 1954 after graduated from photography faculty at Tokyo Polytechnic University, Hosoe became a free photographer. In 1959, Hosoe established a eminent photographers' group VIVO with Tatsuo Fukushima and others. In 1963, Hosoe published Ordeal by Roses, then in 1971, Kamaitachi which focused on a choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata. VIVO dissovled in 1961. In 1974, Hosoe joined in establishment of WORKSHOP Photography School which was run by young photographers of the time. Hosoe was installed as the director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Kiyosato, Yamanashi) since its opening in 1995, vice president of Japan Professional Photographers Society, and professor of Tokyo Polytechnic University, and has taught many photography workshops in Europe and in the U.S. too. Hosoe has achieved sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.

Publications

1963 - Hosoe, Eikoh, and Yukio Mishima. Killed by roses. Tokyo: Shueisha
1969 - Hosoe, Eikoh. 鎌鼬 = Kamaitachi. Tokyo: Gendai Shinchosha
1971 - Hosoe, Eikoh. Embrace. Ashi sonorama co
1971 - Hosoe, Eikoh, Tadanori Yokoo, and Yukio Mishima. Ordeal by roses reedited. Tokyo: Shueisha
1985 - Hosoe, Eikoh. 薔薇刑 = Ba*ra*kei = Ordeal by roses: photographs of Yukio Mishima. New York: Aperture
1986 - Hill, Ronald J. Eikoh Hosoe. Carmel, CA: Friends of Photography
1991 - Hosoe, Eikoh. Eikoh Hosoe, meta. New York: International Center of Photography
1999 - Holborn, Mark. Eikoh Hosoe (Aperture Masters of Photography). New York: Aperture
2005 - Hosoe, Eikoh. 鎌鼬 = Kamaitachi. New York: Aperture
2006 - Hosoe, Eikoh, and Kazuo Ohno. Butterfly dream. Kyoto: Seigensha
2007 - Hosoe, Eikoh. Deadly ashes: Pompeii, Auschwitz, Trinity Site, Hiroshima. Tokyo: Madosha
2009 - Hosoe, Eikoh. 鎌鼬 = Kamaitachi. New York: Aperture
2021 - Eikoh Hosoe. London: Mack

Awards

1951 - FUJIFILM PHOTO CONTEST
1960 - New Artist Award f