1933–2024 (Japanese: 細江 英公) was a Japanese photographer and film producer whose work played a central role in the postwar Japanese avant-garde. Influenced by surrealism, his photography is known for its psychologically charged imagery and its intense, often intimate engagement with the human body.

After World War II, Hosoe adopted the artist name Eikō to symbolize a new Japan. He studied photography at the Tokyo College of Photography, graduating in 1951, and held his first solo exhibition in 1956. In the early 1950s, he became associated with the avant-garde Democrato Artists Association and co-founded the Jazz Film Laboratory, producing experimental, interdisciplinary films alongside figures from literature and music.

Hosoe is particularly known for his influential photobooks. Barakei: Killed by Roses (1963), created in collaboration with writer Yukio Mishima, is considered a landmark of Japanese photobook history and was later republished as Ordeal by Roses. Another major work, Kamaitachi (1969), draws on childhood folklore and myth, combining staged performance with rural landscapes. These books established Hosoe as a key figure in expanding the expressive and conceptual scope of photographic publishing.

Beyond his own artistic production, Hosoe was a major institutional figure in Japanese photography. From 1995, he served as founding director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts and taught photography for decades at the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics. His work remains fundamental to the history of Japanese photography and the photobook.

Reference
Biography text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), German edition. Retrieved January 19, 2026.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eikō_Hosoe