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Eikoh Hosoe
Japanese, born 1933
Raised in Tokyo; lives and works in Kiyosato and Tokyo
The son of a Buddhist priest, Toshihio Hosoe left home as a boy when his family fled Tokyo in advance of the Allied firebombing campaigns of WWII. After the war, he chose the name Eikoh to symbolize the new Japan and perhaps, as one writer (http://www.utata.org/sundaysalon/eikoh-hosoe/) has mused, in recognition of Ike, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. The power of allusion has remained a feature of the work of this artist who began his career as a photographer for women's magazines, and has had a close association with Japan's avant-garde artists including Yukio Mishima and Tatsumi Hijikata. Hosoe's desire for synthesis, suggested by his adopted name, is evident in his adopted name, is evident in his life-long engagement with theater, dance (especially Butoh, a movement derived from the desire to fuse German expressionism and Japanese dance), film, and traditional Japanese visual arts. Hosoe directly addressed his engagement with the past when he wrote, "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."
F. Klapthor, 2015
Person TypeIndividual