shashasha

Akio Nagasawa Gallery’s 2012 reprint of Eikoh Hosoe’s early butoh works includes facsimile reprints of Eikoh Hosoe’s 1960s “Association of Dance Experience” and the 1961 “The Dance Experience 2.”

Hosoe was one of the first photographers to document the new art of butoh, which made its first appearance in 1959 in a piece performed by founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, based on a play by writer Yukio Mishima. Both volumes feature numerous of Hosoe’s photographs Hijikata, Ohno as well as Mishima, in Hosoe’s impactful signature style. As with Hosoe’s later works based on butoh dancers (e.g. Kamaitachi or Butterfly Dream), the photographs explore the limits of bodily expression and capture the allure of the avant-garde art of butoh. In addition to the photographs, the two booklets contain texts by writers such as Yukio Mishima and Tatsuhiko Shibusawa as well as contemporary adverts. Please note that all texts are included in Japanese only.