A Collection of Eastern Brocade Beauties: First Night (Azuma nishiki bijin awase: Shoya)

From Binnie's Eastern Brocade Beauties series (Azuma nishiki bijin awase), "First Night" evokes the charged atmosphere of a new relationship's beginning — the excitement and vulnerability of a first shared night. The series title echoes the great bijin contest prints of Utamaro and his contemporaries, but Binnie's version is entirely his own: the composition rendered in contemporary shin-hanga style, the emotional register contemporary despite the traditional vocabulary. The Eastern brocade of the title suggests the richness of the sensory and emotional world the series depicts.