Japanese photographer Sawatari Hajime is well known for his photographic interpretations of classic tales: his controversial 1973 reworking of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’, titled simply ‘Alice’, won him the Photographic Society of Japan’s Annual Award. In 2004 Sawatari was commissioned to produce a new suite of photographs inspired by the classic shunga (traditional Japanese erotic art) motif of a woman making love to an octopus, as exemplified by Hokusai’s woodblock print ‘The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife’ 1814). His resulting series of sensual black and white images, ‘Hysteric Ten’, has become the stuff of legend and now Londoners can see these pictures for themselves, printed large on handmade Japanese bamboo paper.

More information at: Michael Hoppen Gallery