Saturday 30 May to Friday 26 June 2009

Ordeal by Roses (Sushi Bar)
A Woman's Half Life Seen in Kimono & Embrace (Main Bar)

Ordeal by Roses (Sushi Bar)

Between 1961 and 1962 Eikoh Hosoe took a series of portraits of Yukio Mishima at the novelist's Tokyo home. In the most famous the novelist clutches a rose in his teeth. The dramatic tone of this series perfectly captures the author's menacing theatricality. Yukio Mishima eventually committed suicide by seppuku in 1970.

A Women's Half Life Seen in Kimono (Main Bar)

In this work, the photographer presents six photographs of a kimono-clad woman at different stages of her life. The photographs, from Hosoe's 1963 book "Kimono", have been newly printed on exquisite silk hanging scrolls.

Embrace (Main Bar)

In Hosoe's 1969 to 1970 series of black and white nudes, "Embrace", the very light and dark of the photographic print becomes a metaphor for the joining of male and female bodies. With an unflinching attention to the raw physicality of human flesh, Hosoe presents a work of rare erotic force. The introduction to the work's first appearance in book form was written by Yukio Mishima.

Eikoh Hosoe

Eikoh Hosoe is one of the leading figures of post-war Japanese photography. He came to prominence through his portraits of novelist Yukio Mishima and Butoh dance founder Tatsumi Hijikata. Perhaps as well described as "choreographed" as "taken", his photos are seeped in eroticism and the subconscious. Perfectly fluent in English, Hosoe has been a pivotal figure at the interface of Japanese and Western photography throughout his career. He is the curator of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Yamanashi Prefecture.

The Exhibition Committee