Badlands: Photographs

by Charles Gatewood (photographer)

Badlands is the most comprehensive book of cult photographer Charles Gatewood's images-and the best photo documentation of America s sexual tough, sexy photos of society's self-chosen outcasts. For over three decades Gatewood has been photographing alternative lifestyles, beginning in the late sixties to the tattooed, pierced, SM fetish freaks of today. With the intensity of someone living the life right beside his subjects, Gatewood documented the changes in America, in western society. The radical discovery encoded in his photographs? That after the upheavals, dictatorships and revolutions, humans have returned to their roots. In Gatewood's photos, the individual reigns, the remains when there's nothing left but self. As realities, as documents, as works of art, Charles Gatewood s photos are snippets of the human condition -not dark, but on the trail of life.

Genres: Photography, Sexuality

448 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2000

Reviews

[Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

The photography in this book is wonderful. I love the perspective because it is so different from my own. Getting the chance to see human beings through the eyes of someone else. What a great thing...

[Guimbozino · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book in my early twenties, at a random weekend book fair lodged into a narrow street. I had a strong interest in body modifications and no idea who Charles Gatewood was, but the confrontational cover and the hypnotic gaze of Maria felt like an invitation to a different place, somewhere unknown but familiar, an offer I could not refuse.

This book is an amazing archive of various counter cultures through out 4 decades of human exploration and liberation, both mentally and phisically, that would be responsible for many important changes in the social mainstream by minority groups.

To me, Gatewood's photography is both raw and elegant. The way it immerses you in these underground cultures feels personal and unfiltered but with the visual composition of a dignified erotic archive. Just like a burning car crash, it's daunting, you feel the heat burning your skin and you cannot stop looking.

To this day, I think the cover photo is one of the most beautiful by Gatewood, it's engrained in my mind ever since and Maria's gaze has never left my soul.

[Ясен В. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5