Good for the beginner as this volume will provide an excellent overview of body art. Valuable for the collector due to the quality of the portraits and breadth of body art depicted, supported by the personal and intelligent commentary.


Lots of pictures, a mixture of personal opinions and facts   July 23, 2001
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

It contains mainly information on bodypainting, tattooing, scarification, bodypiercing, gender transformation, masks and other forms of appearance manipulation. it has big clear pictures and personal comments from each person photographed. It's a very nice book to look through it doesnt have a large focus on writing as I wanted. It includes a mixture of personal opinion and actual facts. My main reason in buying the book was because I am interested in body piercing and I was disapointed that that only 12 pages were specifically focused on the subject. It does not give the "why you should not do it" lecture but looks at it in an anthropological view point. Looks at at reasons why people do it, how they feel when pierced and the non western tribes, eg Amazon. I find it disapointing that All pictures are in black and white. I was also disapointed that a lot of the book contains material on costumes, different hair and shoe styles which do not interest me at all. Even so for a person who is interested in them I would think that it is a book that they would enjoy.


Anthropological look at custom body from makeup to piercing.   June 21, 1999
 5 out of 6 found this review helpful

I really enjoyed the anthroplogical perspective of this book. There are chapters on tatooing, piercing, body painting, weight lifting, cosmetic surgery... All ways to customize what God (or your genes) gave you. Very readable and full of corresponding photos.