Badlands: Photographs [Paperback]

Charles Gatewood (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2000

Badlands is the most comprehensive book of cult photographer Charles Gatewood's images-and the best photo documentation of America s sexual underground: tough, sexy photos of society's self-chosen outcasts. For over three decades Gatewood has been photographing alternative lifestyles, beginning in the late sixties to the tattooed, pierced, SM fetish freaks of today. With the intensity of someone living the life right beside his subjects, Gatewood documented the changes in America, in western society. The radical discovery encoded in his photographs? That after the upheavals, dictatorships and revolutions, humans have returned to their roots. In Gatewood's photos, the individual reigns, the remains when there's nothing left but self. As realities, as documents, as works of art, Charles Gatewood s photos are snippets of the human condition -not dark, but on the trail of life.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Charles Gatewood was educated at the University of Missouri as a cultural anthropologist, and discovered photography there. In 1964 he moved to Sweden to explore socialism and escape the Vietnam War. Gatewood returned to America in 1966 to launch one of the most unusual careers in the history of photography. He worked as a photojournalist, shooting rock musicians for Rolling Stone, social problems for Saturday Review and protests for the New York Times. "I've worked," he says,"for everyone from Time and Business Week to sex magazines and textbook publishers." Gatewood's first important exhibition took place in 1972 at Manhattan's Light Gallery. Since that time he has had over thirty acclaimed solo shows in the major cultural centers of Europe and North America, as well as Australia. Each of his eight books of photographs has been culturally provocative, from Sidetripping, with William Burroughs (Strawberry Hill Books, 1975) through Primitives (R. Mutt Press, 1992) which was the advance for the international Modern Primitives movement. He has won numerous awards and fellowships, including the prestigious Leica Medal of Excellence for Outstanding Achievement in Humanistic Photojournalism for Wall Street (R. Mutt Press, 1984)

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Goliath Books (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3980587649
• ISBN-13: 978-3980587648
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,919,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provacative, intelligent, beautiful, crazy, sexy, fun., January 6, 2001

By 

KatintheHat "KatintheHat" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Badlands: Photographs (Paperback)

With this book Gatewood proves himself to be the undisputed master of documenting America's often perverse alternative counterculture. This book is a mixture of cultural anthropology, daring photojournalism, and cutting-edge erotica. It is a retrospective of his work, beginning with early '60s portraits of Bob Dylan, Alan Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs; then takes us through the sexual puberty of New York City in the '70s, it's undoing in Wall Street in the '80s, and brings us into the present with beautiful and haunting photos of the freaks of San Francisco, New York, and LA: e.g. "slave kas" is seen in '90s San Francisco, an eerie but inviting grin on her face as she pulls off her tight vinyl corsette, highlighted by a heart painted on her pierced breasts with blood. This book is a glimpse, nay, so well done, an invitation to a world that few of us ever get to see. This is a conversation starter for sure, and an enduring and timeless book of art.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and Erotic, December 22, 2000

By 

Lee Higgs (Deerfield, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Badlands: Photographs (Paperback)

A great trip through the world of body art and alternate female sexuality. Includes a retrospective of his early work in Greenwich Village. My favorites are the women of San Fransisco, some of them hauntingly beautiful.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent photographs for the non-squeamish, December 10, 2000

By 

SidewalkPhotographer "binarynut" (new york city, ny USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Badlands: Photographs (Paperback)

Gatewood's pictures are not for those with weak stomachs, but the subjects are fascinating. I especially enjoyed the sections on piercing, tattoos, and modern primitives, although its not about to make me rush out to get myself tattooed or pierced. Certainly I'll be haunted by his pictures whenever I see a fish hook in the future.