When it comes to HIV prevention you must talk about sex. And, in my very personal opinion, the more you try to be polite and politically correct the more you risk your message to be weak. That is why I was so amazed by the work by Masami Teraoka when I found it on Sang Bleu’s Blog.

Teraoka’s watercolours are part of a HIV/AIDS awareness campaign from the late 80s and the early 90s that is inspired by the shunga, a style of Japanese erotic illustration that is almost one thousand years old. More precisely, Teraoka’s work is inspired by Hokusai’s “The Dream Of the Fisherman’s Wife”, an illustration where you can admire this imaginative woman receiving cunnilingus by a huge octopus. There is no need to say how brilliant I find all of this.

These almost disturbing and extremely elegant images still bring an important message about prevention and they still are able to communicate something after 20 years, which is not always true when you consider other campaigns from the same period.

Being creative (and not boring) is one of the main duties of safe sex campaigners, so we all should take inspiration from this masterpiece of HIV prevention.