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.


the subtitle should be the "body art bible"   August 23, 2001
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

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.


You haven't seen this before   November 29, 2000
 9 out of 10 found this review helpful

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.


Not what i expected   August 5, 2000
 8 out of 15 found this review helpful

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.


The seminal fetish/tattoo/corset/body-modification guide.   April 10, 1999
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

This is the book that really turned me on to the body as art - to body modification, scarification, corseting, piercing, and all of the other -ifications that have become so wildly popular. Good for the voyeur, and basic reading for the neo-fetishist. Just plain cool. Maybe (nowadays, with Marilyn Manson, et al) a tad out of date.