© Eikoh Hosoe

On May 6, 2010, Eikoh Hosoe was presented with the 18th-Annual Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement in Photography by the National Arts Club. This great evening was hosted by Master of Ceremonies Dr. Stanley Burns, President O. Aldon James, Jr., and Catherine Johnson, Chair of the Photography Committee, with whom I work very closely. The unbelievable list of previous honorees names some of my favorite artists, including Duane Michals (1994) and William Eggleston (2003).

© Eikoh Hosoe

Born in the Yamagata Prefecture of Japan in 1933, Mr. Hosoe has long been considered one of the most influential Japanese photographers working since WWII. The creativity found in his work becomes even more sensational when put into the context of Japanese culture and contemporary photography over 50 years ago. He joined his high school photography club in 1949, took top prize in the student category of the Fuji Photo Contest for his work Poddie Jawoski only two years later, and has continued to reinterpret the world through his photographs ever since. He is not only important for his own work, but also as a teacher and an artistic ambassador of Japan.

"Kamaitachi #17" © 1969 Eikoh Hosoe

One of Eikoh’s stories that I especially related to was about the making of Kamaitachi, his unique collaboration created with close friend and interpretive dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of ankoku butoh dance. The 1969 series is inspired by the legend of kamaitachi (‘weasel-sickle’), a weasel-like supernatural being who haunted the Japanese countryside of Hosoe’s childhood, slashing those he encountered with a sickle. The arresting images show Hijikata’s improvisational performance as a wandering ghost in a Northern Japanese farming village, a performance which also included local villagers. His use of fairy tales and his collaborative style of working with his subjects are both at the core of my own artistic pursuits.

(A new hardcover edition of Kamaitachi is available here through the Aperture Foundation, and is an absolute must-have for every collection.)

Eikoh Hosoe and Sean HusVar, May 6, 2010 (© Ben Gabbe)

Eikoh Hosoe is the founder and director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts and professor of photography at the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics. Hosoe lives in Tokyo and is represented by the Howard Greenberg Gallery in NYC, where his amazing prints are available for purchase. It was a pleasure to meet Eikoh—such a gifted artist, as well as a warm and incredibly giving person.

“To me, photography can be simultaneously both a record and a “mirror” or “window” of self-expression… The camera is generally assumed to be unable to depict that which is not visible to the eye. And yet the photographer who wields it can depict what lies unseen in his memory.”
—Eikoh Hosoe

John William Waterhouse, Odysseus and the Sirens (1891)

The Sirens were actually portrayed as three bird-women parented by the river god Achelous and Chthon, otherwise known as Mother Earth. These dangerous beauties resided in a flowery meadow on an island, perpetually calling after their father who had gone to the sea and left them all behind. Another story had them banished to the island (possibly the Isle of Capri) after losing a singing contest with the Muses, and so they took out their frustrations by luring sailors to swim ashore, pouncing on them and ripping their flesh with their talons, then adding their bones to the piles already littering the island. Yet another tells of their ultimate demise, throwing themselves into the ocean after Odysseus passed without succumbing to their song.

August Rodin, Crouching Woman (1881)

I had also recently seen Auguste Rodin’s Crouching Woman (1881), a beautiful sculpture at the Musée Rodin in Paris. The dark shine of its surface makes me feel like I’m at the bottom of the ocean. It is still considered one of his greatest achievements, and in fact, Octave Mirbeau, an avid Rodin collector and supporter, referred to this sculpture as “my frog,” which I found to be quite serendipitous for my purposes! This figure was also included in his larger work The Gates of Hell, a bronze portal meant for the Musée des Arts Decoratifs which he never finished. In it, she represents one of the lost souls being judged in the Last Judgment—also quite an interesting connection to my newly created endangered species.

Marie Vaccarello, Siren on set

I cast one of my favorite models, Marie Vaccarello, as my Siren. Marie has this built-in sweetness to her that is very disarming, which made her perfect for my Siren’s song. So innocent looking, right?

Though they were clearly not considered sea deities, their story and their origin certainly starts and ends in the ocean. But just like they were torn between earth and ocean, both by nature and by cultural evolutions, I decided to reconnect the siren to the sea by combining its suborder Alcae (coastal birds which nest on sea cliffs and “fly” underwater to catch fish) with another sea monster, Cecaelia—a largely Japanese octopus person (dating back as far as Hokusai) most frequently shown as a woman with octopus or squid tentacles for legs. As my raptor-like Siren somehow lost its ability to feed on men, it evolved into a diving bird, and our captured specimen had just been thrown this octopus at feeding time. We had a lot of fun on the shoot, including a series of alternate takes wearing these really weird aviator-style goggles.

And just in case you were wondering—yes, she is holding a real octopus. What a great sport!

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The opening FRAGMENT shot in the WONDERLAND series, “Hotel Wonderland”, is a bit of both. I had completed the “Alice Falls” shot, and so I was digging for inspiration to help me continue developing the idea. On a trip to NYC, I decided to go sightseeing on one of those double-decker buses, just to take some pictures and see if anything caught my attention.

Lo and behold, we drove past the Hotel Wellington, and I caught a great picture of the sign out front. That giant sweeping ‘W’ just screamed ‘Wonderland.’ After performing a little digital magic, the Hotel Wellington became the Hotel Wonderland, the inspiration for the story behind the WONDERLAND photo series.

Strangely enough, the cool atmosphere of “Alice’s Mushroom” came about on a warm summer morning in Orlando, Florida. I was visiting a friend shortly after completing the rest of the shoot, and we had been up celebrating far too late the night before. As morning broke, I wandered out onto his front lawn to catch the first sunlight. There in my friend’s driveway among these great wood chips and greenery sat this great mushroom, just beckoning me to shoot it. I ran back inside to grab my camera, and another FRAGMENT was born. The contrast between the crispness of that mushroom and the out-of-focus ground cover still knocks me out, because that’s exactly how it looked to me under those sleep-deprived conditions.

The “ALICE” was added in post-production. I was tempted to try writing it in the moment, but I just couldn’t bring myself to possibly damage that pristine mushroom. Besides, I could almost hear the hookah-smoking caterpillar just behind it, calling out to me contemptuously, “Who are YOU?”… but maybe that too was just the delirium from staying up all night.

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Photographer/Creative Director: HUSVAR

Visit WONDERLAND to view the photo series and to read behind-the-scenes features!

Once I had the basic idea for the story (see My Version of the Story for that—um, story), I knew that there was only one event from the book that could encapsulate the events that sent my Alice over the edge, and that was the Mad Tea-Party.

I had originally envisioned the scene a lot more like “Taxi Driver.” Alice spends a lot of her time alone, just like Travis Buttle (but without the mohawk and the incessant pull-ups). One day while playing crazy hostess to her “friend” the March Hare, she asks it a simple question—how do I get back to Wonderland? When she doesn’t get an answer from this inanimate object, polite asking turns into violent interrogating.

After the March Hare does not respond any differently to her threats than to her sweet inquiries, she loses it and strangles the stuffie. We had so much fun with this angle, and Brooke really committed to the role. After playing this out and taking a short break, we tackled the “Melancholy Alice” shot. Seeing how well that turned out (see Remaking Alice for that story), I wanted to try another angle as well, something less Scorcese and more David Lynch. And that’s how we ended up at my Alice’s Mad Cocktail Party. I mean, the only thing my Alice could do that was crazier than interrogating a stuffie was—well, nothing. Just sit and have a drink with it.

In the book, Alice has a cat named Dinah that she misses dearly. We tried to find a good stuffed cat for a prop, but nothing worked, and they all actually ended up competing with the March Hare in the shot. When I mentioned this to Brooke (Alice) on the set, she responded with seven magical words: “I have a black cat named Hollywood.” What’s more Wonderland than that? At first when she brought him to the set, Hollywood the cat was quite apprehensive. After a little calming, he found a comfortable spot that he liked. He then spent the entire photo shoot perched atop the fridge! It was priceless. Anyone who says that animals are difficult to work with never worked with Hollywood.

Besides, not only did he fulfill the role of Dinah, he played the Cheshire Cat, too! Check out those creepy hypnotic eyes!

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Photographer/Creative Director: HUSVAR
Model: Brooke Rewa
Wardrobe Stylist: Andrew Slyder
Photo Assistant: Luke Copping
Production Assistant: Nadejda Petrova
Lighting Consultant: Chris Santucci
Makeup Stylist: Anna Malskaya
Hair Stylist: Josselyn Scott
Wardrobe Assistant: Monika Byrne
Assistants: Laura Sargent & Emilee Hoelscher

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I knew that I wanted my rabbit-hole to be all in Alice’s mind, but not in the same dreamlike manner that the original Alice fell into Wonderland. This wasn’t going to be that strange but generally pleasant journey into the imagination. I wanted to show the disintegration of her mind as she fell into herself, like a snake swallowing its own tail. I wanted to see what was left of her sanity devoured by her thoughts. What better way to show that than a whirlpool of words?

We had a blast creating absurd and imaginative phrases for the rabbit-hole, but it proved to be quite tricky getting the phrases to form into the perfect spiral. We painstakingly spiraled the characters inward, diminishing the size of the letters in each concentric circle. My assistant Nicole Dziedzic and Brooke (Alice) each helped to create the writing. I remember writing the big “W?OND?ER?LAND?,” but I believe that was the extent of my writing. I was having too much fun up on the scaffolding watching it come to life through the lens of my camera!

So for anyone who is interested, here is the complete final text used to create the rabbit-hole spiral:

HOW CAN (DO) i RETURN TO W?OND?ER?LAND? LeAVE ThIS HelL IM tRaPPEd iN REaLiTy [prison bars drawing] I fELL THROUGH a hole iN The EartH Eat ME [cake drawing] HOW MaNY MilES Did i FALL? DiNAh iS Dead [dead cat drawing] ChAsInG that daMn WHITE RAbbit [rabbit ears drawing] DRinK Me PoisoN [skull and crossbones drawing] PREtenD to BE tWO PEOPLE! [blue and pink stick figure drawings] (NOn)SEnsE WHO iN THE FUcK aM I? A Great PUZzle [puzzle piece drawing] That’s What i AM I aM so VERY tiRerED of bEing aLL Alone HERE shouldn’t have cried so much [teardrop drawing] OU ESt MA CHAttE? Oh SHES DEAd! THOSE ANNOYiNG birds! nEvEr to LoSe YOUR tEMPer BLUE CATERPiLLaR… Who AM I? SMOKE FroM tHE HOOKA [hookah pipe drawing] JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS! IM SURE I doN’t WANt to StAy iN HERE ANY LONGer! I wish I WiSH I NEVER Said THAt! CRASh tHE Tea PARTY [tea cup drawing] CAllED ME A PiG BiTcH HAttERS INHALEd MERCURY?! WERE All Mad hERE IM Mad You’re MAD [tea cup drawing] DrAW MuchNESS????? PAINTING ROSES CARD SolDiERS [diamond drawing] KNAVe oF HEARTS HUSVAR CUT OFF THeIr Heads UGLY Hag DUtchESS…SUCKiNg UP

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Photographer/Creative Director: HUSVAR
Model: Brooke Rewa
Production Assistant: Nadejda Petrova
Makeup Stylist: Anna Malskya
Photo Assistant/Set Illustrations: Nicole Dziedzic

Visit WONDERLAND to view the photo series and to read behind-the-scenes features!

As you can see from the above shot of the completed set (read Building Hotel Wonderland for that story), I had thought ahead enough to book three different “models” to fill the role of the March Hare, each very different from the next, to see which one would end up working the best. The realistic small brown bunny sitting on the high chair just was too small and harmless to attend the cocktail hour I had planned. And the medium-sized pink one just screamed Easter and drew too much attention away from the hostess. So the big (but otherwise nondescript) wallflower was invited.

It looked crazy and perfectly out of place on top of that little high chair, but it still wasn’t right. Since it was brand new, it looked like Alice had just brought it home from the store. Much like the character in the book, I wanted this March Hare to have belonged to Wonderland long before Alice set foot there. So with its permission, our stylists began the magical transformation that every model goes through for a shoot. Well, maybe not every model has their eyes removed and abdomen sliced open.

It was a little creepy at first, gutting an innocent bunny like this. We feared that some higher power was looking down at us in judgment for stuffie abuse! But it never complained, not even once, so we just kept going. With each handful of dirt, with every carefully misplaced smear of permanent marker, it belonged more and more in Alice’s kitchen. In the end, we will openly admit it, without any guilt or shame—it was fun to completely destroy this rabbit.

We tried to imagine what this thing had gone through in all those years at the Hotel Wonderland . . . at least a year shoved under the sink, forgotten next to the rusted leaky pipes . . . perhaps a decade collecting dust on top of the refrigerator . . . and when it wasn’t out of sight, it was being dragged around these floors by some sad child, the same child that probably taped over its eyes when they rescued it from the dumpster in the alley.

When we were done, the March Hare sat in the high chair and held its cup for tea. Well, it held the cup as best as it could with one of its hands missing. If you think what we did was inhumane—if only in the sense that this particular “model” is going to have a hard time booking a gig with X’s for eyes—well, I like to believe that this was the role it was born to play, transformed from a simple stuffed bunny into a March Hare as complex and ominous as the blind prophet Tiriesas from Homer’s Odyssey.

Besides, don’t you think these look much better on me? Who’s the Mad Hatter now!

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