exhibition: curated body

Eikoh Hosoe, Man and Woman #24, 1960

Eikoh Hosoe emerged in the experimental arts movement of post-war Japan. Early on in his career he abandoned the documentary style prevalent in the post-war years and produced work that breathed a sense of experimentation and freedom into photography. He developed a unique style combining photography with elements of theatre, dance, film and traditional Japanese art.

Eikoh Hosoe, Man and Woman #20, 1960

Hosoe gained recognition in the late 1950s with the series Man and Woman (1959) wielding power in their explicit exploration of the human form. Permeated by dark, obscure images of naked bodies, Man and Woman is inspired by Tatsumi Hijikata, the charismatic dancer and founder of Butoh dance movement, whom he met through his friend, the writer Yukio Mishima. Hosoe’s concerns resonated deeply with Hijikata whose performance explores themes of death and eroticism through exaggerated, and extremely slow movement, by performers covered in white body paint.

Eikoh Hosoe, Embrace #60, 1970

Produced then years later Embrace series reduce the model’s flesh to a calm abstract contemplation of body contours.  Human limbs are treated as the subjects of a still life, but there is a surprising amount of movement as well —muscles are taught, and bodies are folded and pressed against one another.

In 1974, Hosoe was selected by MoMA as one of 15 artists in the first major survey of Japanese photography outside of Japan. Images from his Man and Woman series were part of the landmark exhibition, New Japanese Photography, and are now on view once again in Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery in New York, along with the prints from Embrace series.