Modern Primitives

Interviews with 15 tattoo and body modification artists. Modern

Primitives examines a vivid contemporary enigma: the growing revival of

highly visual (and sometimes shocking) "primitive" body modification

practices - tattooing, multiple piercing, and scarification.



Also added is a new community section, where current practitioners have been invited to have their cards displayed. Modern Primitives

was the first book to investigate not only the "how" but also the "why"

of body modification practices. It reaches far back into history to

multiform cultural traditions to illuminate one of today's most

wide-spread youth culture visual signifiers. Heavily illustrated with

detailed, contemporary photographs, as well as archival anthropological

images and drawings of ancient tattoo traditions, Modern Primitives was ground-zero for today's body-modification trends.