A social anthropologist by education and professional photographer by occupation, Charles Gatewood has been documenting American subcultures since the early 1960s.
His latest book is "A Complete Unknown," is a collection of photographs of Bob Dylan from 1966, offered in a signed and numbered limited edition.
Explore over the Edge...
table of contents
- The Nicest Dirty Old Man I Know
- SIDETRIPPING
- Wall Street
- PUSHING INK
- Charles Gatewood
- The Birth of the Modern Primitive Movement
- TRUE BLOOD
- BADLANDS
- Gatewood Galleries
- Charles photographs MESSY GIRLS!
- YOU Could Be The Next Charles Gatewood
- Read Charles' Regular Column in SKIN & INK
- Join the Charles Gatewood Mailing List and Newsgroup
The Nicest Dirty Old Man I Know
I first met Charles Gatewood in the fall of 1993. He was giving a showing of the film made about him and Fakir Musafar, called DANCES SACRED AND PROFANE, at an art gallery in San Francisco. I'd heard about it, and decided to go. My interest in body art was starting to explode and I'd been in awe of his photography since seeing it in the RE/Search book MODERN PRIMITIVES.It was near Halloween, and the showing was at the same time as about 100 other funky events, the number of people that turned out for the screening was about a dozen. Rather than get bummed out, the gallery folks brought out pillows for everyone to sit on and passed around a big bowl of candy, turning the screening into a private night with Charles. After the film showed, what would have been a fast-paced Q & A was instead an intimate and personal conversation, like we were all hanging out in someone's living room.
The following spring I was working a part-time job at a kinky book mail order company, which also put on BDSM educational classes. The owner said that she'd scheduled Gatewood to do a slide show as a class and I volunteered immediately to staff the book table for the event.
When Charles showed up that night to get set up, he came over to where I was readying the book sales table, introduced himself and handed me his business card. I introduced myself and mentioned that I'd been to his screening that fall. His eyes roamed over the tattoos on my upper arms again. "Ah yes, " he said taking a closer look at them, "I remember you."
From that point on, no matter what my hair or outfit has looked like, Charles has recognized me, even when coworkers and other friends have not. I think it's because he always looks at the tattoos first.
We ran into each other more in the fetish scene, and I posed for him for the first time that summer. A few years later, I became his web designer, a relationship that continues to this day. He's taken some great pics of me over the years and I've learned a lot about the fetish scene and photography from his fantastic stories. And for a dirty old man, he's incredibly polite, intelligent and personable. Rock on, Chas!
SIDETRIPPING
Sidetripping
Amazon Price: $24.95 (as of 12/19/2009)
List Price: $24.95
Used Price: $4.29
This book collects images from Gatewood's documenting of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, street actions and events, and visits to underground clubs in NY. While on assignment for Rolling Stone magazine in London, Gatewood got to hang with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. That meeting fruited into Burroughs providing the text for this book. To compliment the images perfectly, read the words in your head using Burroughs distinctive, grating rasp.
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Usually ships in 24 hours
Wall Street
This was the book that brought Charles to the attention of the mainstream, an interesting exploration of Wall Street in NY. An excellent write up about these photographs can be read on BoingBoing. This series of images was critically well-received and Gatewood won the Leica Medal of Excellence. However, his own interests were really in documenting the edges of fringe culture and soon thereafter Gatewood's work would leave the mainstream. This is a rare and collectible book, and finding a copy will take a bit of work.Learn more about Wall Street from Amazon.com, or check the eBay auctions listed below as you will sometimes find a copy there.
PUSHING INK
Pushing Ink: The Fine Art of Tattooing (Schiffer Book)
Amazon Price: $19.95 (as of 12/19/2009)
List Price: $19.95
Used Price: $34.63
Charles did quite a bit of photography for this book from NY tattooist Spider Webb. The one tattoo that Charles has is of a peony on the left cheek of his ass, and it was done by Spider. Charles told me once it was one of the most painful physical experiences he's ever had.
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Usually ships in 24 hours
Charles Gatewood
Info and Interviews
- CharlesGatewood.com * Photography and Video * Fetish * Tattoo * Piercing
- Welcome to CharlesGatewood.com. Here is an online store for Charles Gatewood's fetish videos and books. You can view sample image galleries, read interviews, and buy books, videos or custom prints. His subjects include radical body art, extreme body piercing, s/m, bondage and more.
- CHARLES GATEWOOD = ARTATLARGE.COM
- Charles Gatewood began photographing the American "underground" in the mid-1960's, after having received a BA in Anthropology from the University of Missouri. He was considered by many to be an obsessed eccentric whose concerns were extremely marginal. Today however, as public nudity, blatant exhibitionism, full body tattooing and piercing, extreme fetish practices and various forms of sadomasochistic excess have entered mainstream culture, Gatewood's photographs appear not only artistically and historically significant, but also uncannily prophetic.
- Laughing Squid » Charles Gatewood
- Our good friend Charles Gatewood has been chronicling the sexual underground for over 4 decades, first in New York and later on in San Francisco, where he currently resides.
- Charles Gatewood - Prophet of the sexual underground.
- The trendsetter re-releases all that made him great.
- 'God Bless America: The Photography of Charles Gatewood'
- 'God Bless America: The Photography of Charles Gatewood' by writer David Steinberg.
- Forbidden Photographs: The Life and Work of Charles Gatewood (2003)
- from IMDb.com - Cast, Crew, Reviews, Plot Summary, Comments, Discussion, Taglines, Trailers, Posters, Photos, Showtimes, Link to Official Site, Fan Sites
- Dances Sacred and Profane (1987)
- from IMDb.com - Cast, Crew, Reviews, Plot Summary, Comments, Discussion, Taglines, Trailers, Posters, Photos, Showtimes, Link to Official Site, Fan Sites
- Charles Gatewood - BME Encyclopedia
- A fetish photographer who has collaborated with William Burroughs, Spider Webb and Fakir Musafar (among others), Charles Gatewood has been photographing the "seedier side" of American life for over three decades.
- Needled: Charles Gatewood's Tattoo Fetish
- No blog entry could ever be "work safe" when talking about Charles Gatewood. Nude tattooed bodies, fetish divas, and sex workers embody Gatewood's photography and, for this, he is very thankful.
- CHARLES GATEWOOD FROM MODERN PAGANS
- Charles Gatewood discusses the development of his spirituality..
- A Complete Unknown
- To celebrate the resurrection of these rare photographs, Gatewood published a deluxe, oversized hardbound book last month, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN containing the best of the 1966 Dylan images. This 28 page artist's book is limited to 61 signed and numbered copies, and the first ten copies contain an original print.
The Birth of the Modern Primitive Movement
In 1988, Gatewood left NY and moved to San Francisco where he resides to this day. Whether he was following his nose, or his anthropological voyeuristic instincts, he wound up in the city that just might be the most sexually radical in the world. The city has not only a large gay and lesbian population but a large, vocal and visible leather/bdsm community. No matter what the fetish, chances are someone in the Bay Area is into it. Charles was right in position as tattooing and piercing came out of the fringe and into mainstream counterculture. He was the person who first introduced Fakir Musafar to V. Vale, and probably set into motion some of what led to the seminal publication from RE/Search, MODERN PRIMITIVES.
TRUE BLOOD
Moving towards and into the 21st century, Gatewood moved from broad explorations of the body art movement and fetish world into closer examinations of various subcultures within the overall leather/fetish scene. He's often drawn to photograph things that push people's buttons, including his own.With TRUE BLOOD Charles brought the world of blood play and fetishism out into the light. Or as he once said to me, "that's the book that lost me the representation of an art gallery."
Screenings of videos made of the same subject matter have sometimes had people walking out in disgust and sometimes people faint. But it's Gatewood's unflinching eye that reveals the beauty and devotion of these people to what turns them on.
Click for more info or to buy TRUE BLOOD from Amazon.com
BADLANDS
"Are there still areas of the behavorial map marked UNKNOWN? If so, book my passage at once, for it is on these mysteriously familiar journeys that I feel most alive. In these dark worlds I sense no limits. In these forbidden acts I taste the infinite." -- Charles Gatewood
Badlands
Amazon Price: $26.22 (as of 12/19/2009)
List Price: $37.95
Used Price: $8.53
BADLANDS is a 448 page retrospective of Gatewood's entire photographic career. Begin your journey in the mid 1960s as Charles, fresh out of school and back from a few years in Europe, starts to follow the path of the forbidden. Included are images from his years with Annie Sprinkle, Marco Vassi and Spider Webb's R. Mutt Press. Go to Mardi Gras in 1970's New Orleans. Peek in the backrooms of leather bars. Witness acts of art and the birth of the Modern Primitive movement. Revel in blood sports and messy girls.
Avg. Customer Rating:
Usually ships in 24 hours
Gatewood Galleries
the photography of charles gatewood
Beats and Beyond - highlights from the late 60s and early 70s, including William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Bob DylanWall Street - a selection from Gatewood's award winning collection showing NY's Financial District
Tattoo Pin-Ups - If there's one thing that Charles is known for, it's for finding and photographing some of the hottest tattooed girls in the world.
Charles photographs MESSY GIRLS!
If only Charles Gatewood's bathtub and shower could talk.... This book collects dozens of Gatewood Girls who are into wet and messy play. Ketchup, mustard, cake frosting, sprinkles and more adorn the faces and bodies of those who like "sploshing," the name given to this form of erotic play.And yes, the often seen white tile wall and bathtub really are Charles' own bathroom. His SF apartment has great light and most of his shoots are done right in his own house.
This luscious hardcover volume is 368 pages of wet and messy girls.
Click for more info or to buy MESSY GIRLS! from Amazon.com
YOU Could Be The Next Charles Gatewood
After 40 years of photographing amazing sights and thousands of cute fetish girls, a lot of people wonder how Charles does it. Well, you don't have to wonder anymore. With his book PHOTOGRAPHY FOR PERVERTS, Gatewood not only gives tips and tricks for taking great pictures, but offers up a ton of advice and insight into how he interacts with the models (very politely). His stories include chasing down camera thieves, fetish girls gone wild, how to capture sudden photo moments and dozens more. The personal writing style is very easy to read and allows a lot of information to be communicated clearly to the reader.If you are a photographer wanting to break into the world of fetish photography, this should be the very next book you buy and read. If you are a fan of Gatewood's photography, you'll enjoy this book as a front row seat into how his work and career have developed and changed over the years. Tons of great pictures are included... of course.
This 176 page book softcover was published by Greenery Press and is just LOADED with tons of never before seen pictures from Charles' collection along with classic images to illustrate his photographic advice.
Click for more info or to buy PHOTOGRAPHY FOR PERVERTS from Amazon.com
Read Charles' Regular Column in SKIN & INK
If you'd like a fresh info and photo fix from Charles Gatewood, you can read his tattoo and body art columns regularly in Skin & Ink magazine.
Skin & Ink
Amazon Price: $34.99 (as of 12/19/2009)
List Price: $35.94
Used Price:
Usually ships in 1 to 3 months
Join the Charles Gatewood Mailing List and Newsgroup
Charles has a mailing list and newsgroup, for those of you who'd like to get advance notice of his art shows, lectures and presentations. It's a very low traffic group and it's moderated so you won't get any email that isn't about Charles himself.Join the Charles Gatewood/Flash Video/Flash Productions Mailing List and Discussion Group!
by Orthia
My interests range from novel to mundane, from sacred thru profane. I love alternative and fringe culture, radical expression, cult movies and dark hu...
(more)
