Wish

EI-KYU’s real name was Hideo Sugita. He studied painting at Nihon Bijutsu Gakko and began writing art reviews from when he was sixteen. In 1936, he published a collection of photograms entitled Nemuri no Riyu (Reason for Sleep) and it was from then that he used the pen name EI-KYU. In 1951, he formed the Demokrato Artists Association. He played a pioneering role in postwar Japanese art.

This work employs a technique known as photogram. It is a kind of photograph, but what differs significantly from general photographs is that it does not use a camera. Light is shone directly on the object placed on the photographic paper to reproduce its form. Overseas, artists such as L_szl_ Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray produced photograms from the 1920s. EI-KYU showed an interest in photography from 1930 and published an essay entitled “In Order to Produce Photograms Freely” that year. This work was made by placing cutouts of people and something like wire on the photographic paper and drawing with the light of a penlight and exposing it to light several times. Are the two figures dancing? Perhaps it is an incident that takes place in a dream. From the point of view that they were sketches drawn with light, EI-KYU called his photograms “photo-dessins.”