Jeanette May Sexual Revolutions, 1996-1997 ©

The sexual revolution was fought on many fronts during the 1960s and 1970s. We remember "bra burning," swinging, marching for equal pay, and frequenting single's bars. This model primarily describes middle class urbanites. How was the sexual revolution manifested in the lives of working class, small town, married women–women, like my mother, who already had husbands and children when the war of independence was declared? This exhibition re-examines the lives of those mothers who alternated between disgruntled housewife and vivacious sex kitten.

Sexual Revolutions is a feminist, revisionist history of a revolution that was fought at cocktail parties. These mixed-media works are constructed family snapshots framed, literally and figuratively, within the texts of 1960s and 1970s sex manuals and feminist manifestos. The works contrast the middle-class, urban bias of these texts with the realities faced by working-class, rural women. 

This series consists of 24 found books with Polapan photographs. The photographs were shot with an early Polaroid Land camera.  Several of the photographs are silver gelatin prints made from Polapan negatives (Polaroid's 665 positive/negative film), but most are one-of-a-kind Polapan instant prints (667 black & white).