Eikoh Hosoe was born in 1933 in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. He is currently the Director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts.

For the last half a century, Hosoe has devoted himself to photographic creation and activities and he has become one of the most internationally renowned Japanese photographers. At age eighteen, he won an important Japanese photography prize, which inspired him to become a photographer. When he was young, Hosoe had extensive contact with the world of art and culture. At that time in Japan, photography was generally regarded as a documentary and reporting tool. In this environment, Hosoe began his exploration into expressing internal consciousness.

In the 1960s he created the series Men and Woman and Ordeal by Roses, which represented the independent aesthetic of Hosoe‟s bodily expression. These series had a significant impact on the world of international photography.

Men and Women was the first of Hosoe‟s 1960s series to be shown. In it, he used the body as an object, expressing the relationship between the sexes, full of contradictions, conflicts, and mutual attraction and repulsion.

In 1963, he released Ordeal by Roses, which features famous writer Yukio Mishima. Against a Baroque background, Hosoe created an aesthetic image that transcends the individual.

This exhibition presents two series created in the 1960s, reprinted using new techniques, giving old works a brand-new vitality. These works mediate the beauty of Japanese color design and the strength of photographers‟ images.