Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14966 in Books
• Published on: 1988-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From Library Journal
American photographer Sandi Fellman used a rare large size Polaroid camera to create these photos of Irezumi Japanese men and women who wear elaborate full-body tattoos. Fellman treats the tattoos as artworks and their creators as artists. Her text touches on the tattooing process, common motifs, the sociology of the tattoo, and relationships between the tattoo masters and their clients. Author D.M. Thomas has contributed two pages of his reactions to these unusual and even disturbing images. The 46 color plates in this volume, most of them whole body nudes, should prove provocative, fascinating, or repellant to a wide variety of library patrons. Kathryn W. Finkelstein, M.L.S., Cincinnati
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Great Photos, Weak Text
If you have no experience with horimono, this book gives some excellent images focusing mostly on the works of three masters (only one, Horiyoshi III Sensei of Yokohama still actively tattoos). The book is worth buying for the images alone.

And I wish it were the images alone. The captions are often naive, bordering at times on offensive. The author at best over-exotifies and at worse verges on ridiculing some of her subjects, and seems to know very little about the tradition, history, and mores of Japanese society and horimono. Add to that an introduction that is almost unexplainably ludicrous (by an author with no bio!) and you have a book that's great to look at, just not to read. I'd give it 5 stars if it was just the photos.

Read Takahiro Kitamura's books as well as Donald Richie's for better information.

You never saw Polaroids like this!
Imagine life-size Polaroid photographs. Imagine traditional, Japanese, full-body tattooing. Imagine a book of life-size Polaroids taken of traditional, full-body, Japanese tattoos.... this IS that book! Sandi Fellman got the proper introductions and a great toy (a Polaroid that really takes life-size plates) when she went to Japan and set out to document the hidden world of the irezumi, the tattoo underground. This collection is almost all traditional hand-executed tattooing. The details are unparallelled, and you get to see all kinds of shading you might not notice at a distance. This type of body modification still is a secret, private practice in Japan and to view images of this quality is rare.

excellent (would deserve 5 stars - without the introduction)
are you interested in japanese tattoos? yes? then this book is definitely for you! the photographs are great. and the tattoos on display are all done by some of the greatest japanese tattoo masters. the introduction i found rather bad; very artsy fartsy. but it's only a bit more than a page long. so don't worry. the complementary text sandi fellman has written i haven't even read yet - i've been way too busy looking over and over again at the tattoos. again: if you're into tattoos and/or japanese tattoos you simply have to buy this book!