(born Yonezawa, 1933)
Born Hosoe Toshihiro, Hosoe Eikoh is regarded as a master of twentieth-century photography. Before graduating from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1954, he met other artists and writers through Ei-Q, a photographer and leader of the Democratic Artists Association. In 1956, Hosoe had his first solo exhibition, An American Girl in Tokyo, at the Konishiroku Photo Gallery in Tokyo. Three years later, he established the short-lived VIVO agency with photographers Narahara Ikko, Tomatsu Shomei, Kawada Kikuji, Tanno Akira, and Sato Akira. Over the following three decades, Hosoe collaborated on several groundbreaking projects and award-winning publications, including Barakei (Ordeal by Roses) with controversial writer Mishima Yukio and Kamaitachi with famed Butoh dancer Hijikata Tatsumi.
Hosoe has received numerous awards throughout his career and has been the subject of many exhibitions. He has spent much of his time as a teacher, cofounding the Workshop photography school in 1974 with Tomatsu, Fukase Masahisa, and Moriyama Daido, among others, and returning to the Tokyo College of Photography in 1975 as a professor. Hosoe also has served as the director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Yamanashi Prefecture.
