Ei-Q

Born in Miyazaki Prefecture, Sugita Hideo, who later adopted the name E-Q, participated in both photography and painting circles in pre- and post- war Japan. In addition, the critical essays he contributed to art journals, among them Mizue, Atelier, and Photo Times, in the 1920s and 1930s established him as an advocate for avant-garde tendencies.
He originally trained in oil painting (1925-27) at the Japan Art School. However, around 1930 he began to explore photography, the photogram in particular, and he may be considered Japan's leading proponent of this technique. His photograms show the influence of surrealism, a European artistic movement introduced to Japan in the mid-1930s. In essays such as "For the Liberal Production of Photograms" of 1930 (Photo Times), Ei-Q inveighed against artistic photography that simply copied painting. The photogram, he argued, had to be more than an abstract light composition. It had to be a "synthesis of all photographic techniques, using a photographic paper which, reacting sensitively to light, creates a construction that was never possible using any other materials.
Ei-Q was a founding member of the Liberal Artists Association (Jiyū Bijutsuka Kyōkai), established in 1937, which advocated "the creation of a mode of art for our times, focusing on abstract painting; the association's exhibitions included photography and sculpture, in addition to painting. Ultimately, Ei-Q strove to create a fusion of painting and
photography, as evidenced in the first publication of his "Photo-Dessins" (the name he preferred for his photograms) in 1936. Entitled Nemuri no riyū (Reason of Sleep) and issued in a limited edition of forty copies, this publication firmly established Ei-O's place in the avant-garde milieu of the time.
In 1951, Ei-Q was instrumental in the formation of the Democratic Artists Association called Demokrato, and remained active in both painting and photography circles in the postwar period.