Customer Reviews

Modern Primitives (Re/Search)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Modern Primitives" is easily THE best book that explores contemporary body modification. The book has hundreds of pictures, wonderful in-depth interviews with important figures and tons of other great content. Though it focuses primarily on those in the world of body modification today, it also refers back to the origins and meanings in past and present cultures.

The interviews are relevant, interesting and very readable. You could sit down and read the text like a novel or you could simply refer to them for reference as necessary.

The best part is that this book takes an approach that will speak to those reading for personal reasons *and* those reading for academic interest. "Modern Primitives" is entertainly while still highly intellectual. The text is not sensationalistic like many are; it does not set out to shock the reader or obscenely glorify body ritual -- but simply to educate and inform.

If you think are a jaded connoisseur of alternative lifestyle practices and have seen everything, this book will make you think again. Re/search has delivered a fantastic compendium of stories and photos of people that take the art of body modification to the extreme - piercing (everywhere and with anything), tattoo, scarification, extreme corsetry and surgical alterations (including genitalia splitting). The interviews that accompany this fantastic array of photos are interesting, genuine attempts to understand why people would go to such extreme lengths to alter their bodies.

This is the kind of coffee table book that your guests will not be able to put down.

Definitely one of the best if not the best book I own on body piercing and tattooing. 204 pages on fascinating people, photographs and detailed information. It looks at the reasons why people in the west are taking part in the ritualistic practice of multiple piercing and tattooing which in the past was done only by tribes. A book that I am never bored to open again and again and each time I do I always find something new that i did not know before. This book has opened up and exposed me to a variety of aspects of body decoration that I never had been aware of before.

I got this book when it was first published by ReSearch in SF, the summer of 1989. I took it as one of two pleasure reading books while I attended a 6 week writing workshop, and almost never touched the other book. I had never explored such a diversity of differentness. I had no idea you could do so many things to one's body, or that you could pierce so many places!

Put together out of a series of interviews, this book includes "everyone who is anyone" from the birth of the modern body art movement. Tattooing, piercing, branding, cutting, it's all in here, with tons of amazing photos from the best of the fetish world. If you're thinking of piercing your navel, or adding your school logo to your bikini line, read this first.

Like most of Re/Search's output, this is largely interviews with a bunch of attention hungry self-promoters that has not dated terribly well because most of the subjects were simply not that interesting. The only appeal this work retains is the unintentional humor of so many people taking their hobby so seriously because it was so "underground": now that you can buy "body modification": magazines at Safeway and Ralph's, the "cutting-edge" cachet is missing and what's left? Nothing much.

A Masterpiece. This is the book that launched the "Modern Primitive" revival at a time when tattoos, body piercing, and scarification were still deeply underground and "fringe." The book features in-depth and sympathetic interviews with leading lights in the field, from tattoo artists and piercers to historians and writers immersed in this world. "Modern Primitives" provides a window into a world of people who refuse to accept the often hypocritical rules of polite society, showing us people who have reclaimed their own bodies for sensual, aesthetic, or sacred purposes -- sometimes all three.

It's a deeply subversive work, all the more so for the love and respect it displays towards its subject. I first encountered the book about fifteen years ago and it totally transformed me; it literally changed my life. There's no better place to begin an exploration into the myriad ways people have decorated and otherwise used their own bodies.

let me start by saying that i do very much like a lot of the books that have been published by "re/search".

the title says it all: "modern primitives". published back in 1989 it was - as far as i know - one of the first publications looking into now trendy things such as tattooing and piercing. but don't let this mislead you; it goes beyond those topics!

there are so many great, fantastic, unbelievable, excellent interviews with countless interesting personalities included. i was overwhelmed! still am! i've had this book for a few years now, but i keep re-reading lots of interviews again and again.

here are some of the people that have had the opportunity to speak out in this book: don ed hardy, captain don, anton lavey, leo zulueta, bill salmon, lyle tuttle, vyvyn lazonga, monte cazazza, dan thomé, hanky panky, goodtime charlie cartwright, jim ward and genesis & paula p. orridge (of throbbing gristle / psychic tv fame).

also, there are lots and lots of great photographs; (some by the fantastic charles gatewood). though not all of them for the faint hearted...

this book is a must-have, imho, for anyone interested in stuff like tattooing and/or piercing.

A must for all tattoo/scarification afficionados. Interviews are top notch. Chosen artists truly are the best at what they do. Found this to be a great resource for Masters Thesis at UC Berkeley on Contemporary tattoo. Did not put it down for hours once I got me wee hands on it...

A top notch reference book that features some of the most important names in the scene. If you are interested at all in tatoos, piercings, scarifications, body mods, surgical and non-surgical and a whole lot of other related stuff, this book is a great read and a must have reference.

The interviews in this book are definitely interesting, but some photos of people with extreme modifications would have made it a lot better, in my opinion. It's a lot to read when so much of body modification is a visual thing. A lot of it focuses on tribal tattooing as well, which is cool, but I wish it had more information of the 'modern' and not just the 'primitive'.