Positional Blindness Series (four drawings)

This series of four drawings found its origins in an illustrated sexual intercourse manual from 1969 (the year I was born) that I found in a used book store in Denver, Colorado. The book became a humorous inspiration, as the illustrated mechanical aspects of/options for heterosexual procreation were numerous - yet they were portrayed as robotic, disengaged and frankly…hilarious. The cover of the book itself validates its contents by stating that the persons depicted were “an actual married couple” and proclaims itself to be the most “updated marriage manual to date”.

The four drawings in this series borrow the visual language of color blindness tests as an analogy of vision; that people see the same things, but perhaps differently. For some, intercourse is the functional and mechanical “means to an end” for procreation. But for others, perhaps it is a pleasurable activity only. The drawings could be interpreted as either, and the acts themselves as a negotiating decision as to whether or not to bear children. Heterosexual sex, as portrayed here, could either be celebrated for its procreative potential or laden with complications for those who do not want to have children.

Represented here are the four most common types of colorblindness:  Deuteranomaly, Protanomaly, Monochromacy and Dichromacy. They are translated in the drawings as what someone with those respective types of colorblindness would see, again presented as examples of differing vision.