Barakei (Ordeal by Roses) – Eikoh Hosoe

In homage to Eikoh Hosoe, who died in September 2024, Galerie Eric Mouchet is pleased to present Ordeal by Roses, his most emblematic photographic series, dedicated to the novelist Yukio Mishima.
 
Born in 1933, Eikoh Hosoe spent his youth in a Japan devastated by war. The avant-garde photographers of his generation, torn between nationalist authoritarianism and an openness to a victorious yet tempting West, all bear witness, in one way or another, to the collapse of age-old Japanese traditions and supremacy. Their emancipation came about through their coming together in collectives such as Jūnin-no-Me in 1956-57, and VIVO in the early 1960s, but also through numerous interdisciplinary exchanges. Following his meeting with the charismatic creator of the Bûto theatre, Tatsumi Hijikata, Hosoe was first noticed in 1961 for his beautifully produced book Man and Woman, which transcended the art of eroticism through its graphic aestheticism. Then, in 1963, Hosoe created the album Barakei – Killed by Roses with Yukio Mishima, focusing on the sulphurous author and raising the photographer to international renown. In Barakei, Mishima, always unclothed, is alternately captured amid the kitschy gold of his Tokyo home, or in Hijikata’s empty dance studio, while other shots pay homage to his love of European Renaissance painting, and particularly its very carnal iconography of the martyr of Saint Sebastian.
 
Barakei is an erotic, morbid fable, whose provocative allusion to Mishima’s homosexuality conveys the despair of an immense, erudite author who refuses to accept the decline of his country and his body.
 
Barakei is Eikoh Hosoe’s incontestable masterpiece, a series that was previously shown at Galerie Eric Mouchet Paris in 2016.
 
The exhibition is part of Photo Brussels Festival from 23 January To 23 February 2025.
 
MORE INFORMATIONS :
 
// Eikoh Hosoe
// Press Kit
// Barakei – Ordeal by Roses (16/01-22/03/2025 | Brussels, Belgium)