Biography provided by Focal press
 
Hosoe merged desire and unseen memories to pioneer a grittily expressionistic form of Japanese photography. His high-contrast, graphic, black and white photographs portray a mysterious interior world of surreal dreams that is both sensual and disturbing. He gained recognition in 1963 with the publication of Barakei (Ordeal by Roses) in which an ornate world of aestheticism was constructed around the writer Yukio Mishima. By eliminating details Hosoe enhanced the black areas of his compositions to create complex and disorienting spatial compositions that challenged both accepted photographic practices and the nature of interpersonal relationships.
 
(Author: RH)
 
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409] (Used with permission)