PARIS.- Born in 1933, Eikoh Hosoe spent his childhood in a Japan destroyed by the war. The avant-garde photographers of his generation, torn between nationalist authoritarianism and the opening of an equally seductive vanquishing West, in one way or another, witnessed everything from the collapsing of traditions to the Japanese millennial supremacy.

Their emancipation came through the bringing together of collectives such as Jūninno-Me in 1956-57 and VIVO at the beginning of the 1960s, but equally through numerous interdisciplinary exchanges. Following on from his meet-up with the charismatic theatre creator Butoh Tatsumi Hijikata, Hosoe became known from 1961 for his superbly crafted book – Man and Woman – which transcends the boundaries of erotic art through its graphic over dramatization. Then, in 1963, Hosoe created the album Barakei – Killed by Roses with Yukio Mishima which put the scandalous author in the spotlight and lifted the photographer to immediate international notoriety.

In Barakei, Mishima, always stripped bare, is alternatively captured in the kitschy gold setting of his home in Tokyo and in Hijikata’s deserted dance studio. The other shots pay tribute to his love for European Renaissance painting, and, in particular his very sensual iconography of the martyr Saint Sebastian.

Barakei is an erotic and morbid fable that is well known due to its provocative allusion to Mishima’s homosexuality and the despair of an immensly erudite author who refused the decline of his country and of his body. Barakei is incontestably Eikoh Hosoe’s masterpiece.

The work of Eikoh Hosoe was displayed in Arles at the exhibition ‘‘Pas de deux, Kazuo Ono’’ by Eikoh Hosoe and William Klein, 4 July – 28 August at the Chapelle Saint-Martin du Méjan, Arles.

The exhibition will play a part in Photo Saint Germain – the photography festival situated on the left bank of the Seine from the 4 – 20 November 2016.