The Gallery Priska Pasquer is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Germany by Eikoh Hosoe, one of Japan’s pre-eminent twentieth-century photographers.

During the post-war era, Eikoh Hosoe (b. 1933) played a key role in the creation of a new graphic style that emerged as a reaction against the realist documentary tradition prevalent in Japanese photography at the time. The exhibition will focus on Hose’s three landmark series “Ordeal by Roses” (1961-62), “Kamaitachi” (1965-1968), “Simon: A Private Landscape” (1971-present) as well as on his famous nude series “Man and Woman” (1959-60)” and “Embrace” (1969-70). These series demonstrate the rich and diverse style of Hose’s photography in combining an extremely personal view with radical narrative commentary on sexuality, culture, mortality, and memory. The series set forth Hose’s “Iconoclasm-by-Photography” a creative theory that placed Hosoe a the forefront of the development of a modern Japanese photographic aesthetic.

Eikoh Hose’s Ordeal by Roses (1961-1952), or “Killed by Roses” in the first edition, portrays the acclaimed Japanese author Yukio Mishima, as the central figure in a complexly orchestrated photographic drama. With Mishima´s powerfully built body and strangely animated expressions, Hosoe created a private theatre with Mishima in the lead role. The series portrays interior worlds filled by pagan and Christian symbols with elements of Baroque and Rococo architecture. The clash of Mishima´s body with its surroundings suggests a culture and belief system in conflict. Mishima wrote of Hose’s photographs: “God is dead, and naked human beings face the world shameless and without pride.” Hose’s frequent manifestation of the dream state in “Ordeal by Roses” and the main theme of life and death seemed to predict Mishima´s suicide in 1970, seven years after the first publication of the book. The famous writer’s death was considered a turning point in the transformation of Modern Japan.

Kamaitachi (1965-68), or “sickle-toothed weasel” translated literally from Japanese, is a personal record from Hose’s childhood during his wartime evacuation in 1944. Kamaitachi was a small ghost-like creature, a “spirit of the soil”, known in Japanese superstition to terrorize people in the rice field lane. Returning to the place of his seclusion, Hosoe re-created his boyhood memories. In the series Japanese dancer and playwright Tatsumi Hijikata portrays a male lone figure dressed in traditional Japanese clothing wandering the countryside in torment and estrangement. The series represents a complex document mixed with conflicting feelings of love and hate from Hose’s inner reflection.

Like “Kamaitachi”, Hose’s unfinished series Simon: A Private Landscape is record of Hose’s early recollection. Began in 1971, the series is based on Hosoe memories as a student of photography in the 1950´s wandering Tokyo’s old downtown district to capture images of lost people and landscapes. The series is centered around the character of a sexy and bewitching transsexual form Tokyo’s Red-Light District named Simon played by the Japanese actor and playwright Juro Kara.

Eikoh Hosoe, born “Toshihio” Hosoe, was the second son of a Buddhist priest, in Yonesawa, Japan. Following the war, Hosoe adapted the name “Eikoh” as a symbolic gesture acknowledging entry into a new era for Japan. In the early 1950´s Hosoe attended the Tokyo College of Photography. While still a student he joined “Demokrato” an avant-garde artist’s group under the spiritual leadership of the artist Ei Q (another young member was the painter On Kawara). In 1960 he became one of the six founding members of VIVO, a picture agency formed to promote the work of individual photographers. In 1995 Eikoh Hosoe was instrumental in the founding of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (K*MoPA). He directs the museum and Buddhist retreat today.

Selected publications:
– Man and Women, 1961
– Ordeal by Roses, 1963, new edition 1971
– Kamaitachi, 1969
– Embrace, 1971
– The Cosmos of Gaudi, 1984
– Eikoh Hosoe: Photographs 1950-2000, 2000