Hope

To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.-- Erich Fromm

Eihoh Hosoe

Eikoh Hosoe | MoMA

Eikoh Hosoe ( born 18 March 1933 in Yonezawa, Yamagata) is a Japanese photographer and filmmaker who emerged in the experimental arts movement of post-World War II Japan. He is known for his psychologically charged images, often exploring subjects such as death, erotic obsession, and irrationality. He is known for his friendships and artistic collaborations with the writer Yukio Mishima and 1960s avant-garde artists such as the dancer Tatsumi Hijikata.

1933 Born in Yonezawa, Yamagata.
1954 Graduates from Tokyo College of Photography.
1956 First solo exhibition, American Girl in Tokyo, achieves great success.
1957-59 Invited to take part in Junin-no-me (Eyes of Ten), an exhibition held by Tatsuo Fukushima in Tokyo showcasing new photographic approaches and aiming to “sever ties with established photography.”
1960 Founds Vivo with Kawada Kikuji, Sato Akira, Tanno Akira, Narahara Ikko and Tomatsu Shomei. The group was short-lived (it disbanded in 1959) but had a profound impact on photography in Japan at the time.
1961-63 Shoots a series of portraits of the novelist Mishima Yukio forming the series Barakei (Killed by Roses) which is first published in 1963.
1965-68 Collaborates on the Kamaitachi series with the founder of Butoh dance, Hijikata Tatsumi. The series is taken in the region from which Hosoe and Hijikata originate.
1975 Offered professorship at Tokyo College of Photography and helps to begin their fine art photography collection.

“To me photography can be simultaneously both a record and a mirror or window of self-expression… 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.”- Eikoh Hosoe

Eikoh Hosoe: Ordeal by Roses

EIKOH HOSOE: “Subject Matter”

By Eikoh Hosoe

I am Eikoh Hosoe, a photographer from Tokyo. It is a great honor for me to speak on this special occasion about my collection of photographs of Ba-ra-kei, or Ordeal by Roses, and my experience of photographing Yukio Mishima.

Ba-ra-kei began one day in September 1961 as a result of an assignment from the Japanese publisher Kodansha. I was commissioned to photograph Yukio Mishima for the cover of Mishima’s book of critical essays, which Kodansha was about to publish.

I knew Mishima by name, but I had never met him. I was curious as to why I had been given such an important assignment and was told by the editor over the phone that I had been chosen at Mishima’s special request. I instantly accepted the offer, but the question still remained: Why had he chosen me?

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