Rating: 
Summary: Deliciously Wonderful
Review: "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.
Rating:
Summary: Deliciously Wonderful
Review: "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.
Rating:
Summary: An absolute jewel
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: My Aunt Millie loved it
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: the subtitle should be the "body art bible"
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: You haven't seen this before
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: You haven't seen this before
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Not for your grandmother
Review: Modern Primitives is a book often described as a must have for those in the modification community. However, the illuminating interviews will be interesting to anybody, and the variation in topics discussed means that all niches of the body modification culture are covered. As far as I know, there is simply no other book like it.
Rating:
Summary: Not for your grandmother
Review: Modern Primitives is a book often described as a must have for those in the modification community. However, the illuminating interviews will be interesting to anybody, and the variation in topics discussed means that all niches of the body modification culture are covered. As far as I know, there is simply no other book like it.
Rating:
Summary: Not what i expected
Review: The book is filled with black and white pictures of interviewed people. The book mainly consists of interviews with many people and their views on body modification, let it bee tattooing, piercing etc. Nothing about body art but more so about people that have practiced/played a large role in body art. Interesting if you are interested in "famous" people and their opinions about body modification but utterly useless if you want to know facts and information about it.
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