Eikoh Hosoe’s small retrospective exhibit at 401 Projects is titled Inter-Course, and upon walking into the heart of the gallery, my initial reaction is: Why don’t they just call it S-E-X? The explicit nature of most of the photographs does everything but scream the word.

So, why Inter-Course? Well, for one thing, it’s cleverer, and Hosoe, although he didn’t title the exhibit himself, is a very clever man. But Hosoe’s work transcends one-liners, and his photographs are far from gimmicky. Shock factor isn’t what he’s after: The emphasis is on subtlety and barring that, then at least precision—which is managed through the eyes and hands of an artist behind the camera, seeing what he sees and creating the sometimes bare, other times theatrical sets that he generates.

Through the course of the images, the individual series represented in the show—“Embrace,” “Man & Woman,” “Ordeal By Roses,” “Woman & Animal,” “Ukiyo-e Projection”—move from elegant renderings of faceless bodies in various carnal poses to increasingly explicit shots. For instance, you see an image from “Embrace,” a black-and-white photo of two upright torsos, one dark and one light, facing each other, no gap in between, cut off at the thighs and below the chest. Looks like there’s not much happening. But think about it, and you’ll get an idea of just what might be. As I said—subtle.

Then, a little further along, I come to something from “Woman & Animal.” Suddenly, there’s a female who appears to be attempting to Frenchkiss a mouse. Two pictures later, she seems to be snuggling up to a large fish near her groin.

With the “Ukiyo-e Projections”, there’s full-on drama: a menage-a-trois between man, woman and art (ukiyo-e are traditional Japanese erotic images). They are the only color images in the show: a sensual feast. Hosoe demonstrates his eye for the theatrical with elaborate self-staged sets involving naked dancers onto whose bodies ukiyo-e paintings are projected. The ukiyo-e are underscored by the dancers’ bodies contorted into sexual positions and painted according to the outline of the images being projected onto their flesh. Here, the potentially explosive energies of sex are tempered, held in check by the precise arts of painting and dance.

The photographer has been interested in dancers “from the very beginning” of his career in the 1950s in Japan. He was friends with the late founder of Butoh dance, Tatsumi Hijikata. Hosoe’s interest in dancers, like his interest in other subjects, stems from his preoccupation with the body in abstract. About “Man & Woman” and “Embrace,” he says, “I just wanted to express the core of human. The face tells many things. But the body itself is a core. It is the basic structure of a human. No spirit, no nothing. You cannot tell who it is, or what he or she is. You can recognize only the difference of sex. It is a way to express universality of being.”

Through Nov. 26. 401 Projects, 401 West St. (betw. W. 10th & Charles Sts.), 212-633-6202; Wed.-Sun. 12-6 p.m.