Intimacy Black and White

Intimacy — Black and White presents a couple in close proximity, rendered in the stark contrast of the title's palette. The monochrome approach was less characteristic of Mori's typically vivid folk-art colorism and suggests a more experimental or restrained moment in his output. Black and white compositions in the Japanese print tradition carried their own aesthetic weight — the graphic directness of sumi ink on white paper having been the foundation of the medium from its earliest origins. This version of the intimacy subject would have relied entirely on line and tonal contrast to carry its emotional content.