BME: Body Modification Ezine

A tattooed person suspends from hooks, laying flat, one leg higher than the other. Their head is back, and they seem to be smiling, dark hair dangling like an anime character.

Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Category: ModBlog

  • Pierced Whiskers

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Speaking of Eric Stango (of Lifestyles in Connecticut), I also wanted to show one more fun piercing project he’s done — this set of pierced whiskers, which is wonderfully appropriate on a woman named Cat. Seriously! He did them by first piercing the client with a set of 14ga labrets, and once those were healed and stable, he replaced them with a set of 14ga labret backings with long black teflon whiskers attached. Now what I want to know, is does this count as a mod that gives you a “sixth sense” in the same way that magnets do, if you use them like an animal does, walking through a dark and crowded room, using the whiskers as “feelers” to make sure your body doesn’t bump into anything? Either way, very cute and charming.

  • Anarchy Ear

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Last year Eric Stango of Lifestyles in Connecticut entered this over-the-top ear project in the Earmageddon contest. It didn’t win, but I think they should have given him some special Chaos Magick award or something. This seems like the sort of piercing that might grow on the ear of Tetsuo the Iron Man. The sort of thing that happens when one of Joeltrons “trondustrials” escapes from Arkham Asylum. My hat would be off to Eric and this piercing, but the piercing already stole my hat and ate it. I forgive it though, because it’s an awful lot of fun to watch.

    By the way I want to point out that what you see hanging out at the bottom, from the tragus and the lobe, aren’t just dangly bits — they’re actually attaching to a surface piercing on the sideburn, as you can see from the inset “before” picture. Click to zoom in for a better look.

  • Illusion — Two implants or three?

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    One type of implant I’ve always liked are the ones that mess with the person’s anatomy — Eaten Placenta’s ribcage bumps are a good example, as are these forearm implants (manufactured by Alejandro Hernandez) done on Johan Guardia by Juan Castro of Poder Sin Limites Body Mods (“Unlimited Power Body Mods”) in Alajuela, Costa Rica. Now, assuming my Spanish isn’t failing me, this is “doble joroba”, that is, two implants, not three, done using 12mm (1/2″) x 55mm (2″) Teflon half-domes. The third bump is the natural bump of Johan’s wrist, and I think Juan has done a great job cleanly aesthetically integrating this implant into Johan’s anatomy.

    But what I really love about this particular implant is that if Johan ever has to go to a hospital ER, it’s going to the make the doctors FREAK THE FUCK OUT as they imagine the horrible compound fracture in his arm. That said, I won’t be so amused if the doctors break his arm trying to fix what doesn’t need fixing!

  • Coming at you like a frieght train!

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Could there possibly be a better tattoo to celebrate ModBlog’s new superfast servers that Jon set up for us last night? I know how happy it makes me as someone who used to have to wait minutes for edits to my entries to be accepted, so I hope it makes you happy as a reader as well.

    I’m also really happy to see that tattoo artists have been posting more healed work lately, showing the public what they’re really capable of. If this trend continues, it will really separate the great tattoo artists from people who are simply great artists. Just because someone can paint doesn’t mean they can lay in a tattoo that will look good for your lifetime (as you may recall from the controversial entry on tattoo fading and a couple followup entries). I’m very happy to point out that California-based tattoo artist Cory Norris (corynorrisart.com) is more than capable of doing both. Even though this photo of Ricky’s chest that he did looks like it was taken the day it was done, it’s actually fully healed in this picture, even though the blacks are deep, the red flames are incredibly vibrant, the shading in the clouds is still rich and you can make out the ghostly seething skulls inside, but the touch I really like is the deep red glow inside the eyes of the skull in the train’s engine, as if it has hellish glowing coal embers for brains.

    Thanks again to Cory Norris — let’s hope top artists keep on posting healed work, really letting the world know who can be trusted to implant art that will last a lifetime — not just win you a “best of show” tattoo convention plaque and then fade out a month later. Let’s put the emphasis back on real tattoos. Click to see it a bit bigger of course.

  • FTW Update and Nose Skin Removal

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    As you know, I’m a fan of body modification master Thorsten Sekira at Silver Studio (silverstudio.at) in Vienna, Austria and I recently posted a couple of his large-scale scarifications. Today I wanted to feature some of his smaller scale work that he’s done on Pauli’s face. The FTW forehead — I’m consistently surprised at how subtle forehead scarification often is — was done almost two years ago (January 2011), so it’s well healed in the pictures that show the fresh skin peeling on the nose. Given the fine structure of the nose and its zero margin for error and the fact that it’s slightly different from the normal body surface skin that artists are more familiar with, this is definitely the sort of scarification best reserved for artists with Thorsten’s level of experience.

    pauli-by-thorsten-1

    The first picture can be zoomed in.

    As an aside I gotta say I’m really loving the “13″ eyelid tattoo! And it’s always a great pleasure not just watching scars heal, but watching body modification collections on major enthusiasts like Pauli grow. It’s a real treat. Some day I’d love to see someone put together a comprehensive book that tracks a multitude of heavily modded people over a ten-or-more-year window, perhaps with a big coffee-table page-spread dedicated to each person with photos showing how their aesthetic evolved over time. If I had more time on this planet I’d sign myself up to tackle such a project, but since I don’t, I hope someone will steal the idea (or has already had it independently).

    pauli-by-thorsten-2

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