Posies for Predators

Speculations on the visual experience of people (and carnivores)

with Protanopia and Deuteranopia-type (red-green) color blindness

Red-green color blindness affects about seven or eight percent of American men, and most predatory animals. Do they have some advantage in seeing the world on a more level chromatic playing field, eliminating both the fiery end of the spectrum and the calming middle? Or are they just missing something the rest of us can't imagine doing without? Is love still like a red, red rose when it appears in shades of drab from petal to stem? What about that lady in red?

 

These are part of a series of photographs of flowers in conventionally feminine, sensual colors, mainly red and pink, with hues shifted to approximate, for the rest of us, the way they might appear to people with severe red-green colorblindness. At first I couldn't work on these for very long at one time, because it made me feel a little sick. Now I'm starting to get used to it.