Customer Reviews

Modern Primitives: Tattoo, Piercing, Scarification- An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment & Ritual (RE / Search, No. 12)

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A reviewer below calls this dated. Well, it's 22 years old! I bought it when it first came out and had to hide it from the kids due to some of the photos of rather extreme body modifications-- now those kids are grown, and the world they inhabit contains millions of examples of what was rare and shocking in its day. Facial tattoos, multiple piercings, all manner of body mods: they're an everyday experience now. Look at this as an intriguing snapshot of a counterculture in its infancy, before there were tattoo parlors in every town and a third of the US population sported ink.

Warning: some of this is not for the faint of heart. The section on genital mods is still pretty hard to look at....

"Dated," perhaps. But still fascinating.

This has several excellent articles by the master of the Modern Primatives (Fakir) detailing rituals and works over a very long period of time throughout his life, as well as several others at the forefront of the scene and some relatively unknowns too. This book definitely takes a more serious approach to the philosophy and work of the movement beyond just a dinky tattoo or piercing, and talking about body modification and discipline which are absolutely more relevant, interesting and visually complex.

Re-search is a great source for any subject that it is on, and to get these for like 5$ is a bargain of demonic proportions.

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.

Re-Search took an in depth view into the lives of their subjects. Told by the people themselves as well as the fans. It approches it's subjects with an open mind and no judgement. This statement is for all of the books put out by Re-Search.