Some of the photos didn’t include descriptions, only the person’s name. The only fault I found with the book was that I wanted more. I love all the photos and have no problem displaying this book in my home. It also includes a few gorgeous females along with men in a couple of pics. None of the males in these photos took themselves too seriously and it shows a playful side to each one. It also includes an Introductory interview by Jess Cagle, the editorial director of People and Entertainment Weekly.Įach photo in this gorgeous coffee table book tells a story.
THE CIPHER KATHE KOJA KIRKUS FULL
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.This book is full of sexy, candid, humorous and endearing shots from Robert Trachtenbergs own portfolio. The ending is merely a jarring, long-overdue bit of business on the whole the novel, like the art of the characters it portrays, is a sustained exercise in style over substance.Ĭopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. Koja ( The Cipher ) has a considerable talent for evoking atmosphere, but her style, an obscurantist mix of stark minimalism and florid gush, further distances the characters from the reader and hampers the novel's already minimal movement.
Readers will find it hard to relate to such a rarefied concern, especially since the roots of Bibi's obsession are never explored.
Their main source of conflict is Bibi's growing compulsion to mortify her flesh via piercing, tattooing and scarification. Koja devotes endless pages to details of their productions, and the vicissitudes of the protagonists' relationship have to suffice for drama. Tess meets Bibi Bloss, a fey dancer, and they establish Surgeons of the Demolition, a performance art troupe whose shows combine Tess's mobile, menacing, robotlike constructions with Bibi's dancers and much fake blood. The main character, Tess Bajac, is an earnest young sculptor who lives for her work, so much so that readers may well long for her to do something besides make anther sculpture. This humorless novel about art punks in an unnamed present-day city is long on form and short on content. Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. Beyond the styptic pencil and safety blades. A strong stylist, Koja makes white-hot the pains of metal sculpting and draws a big picture of S&M bars and byways before bringing on her big show as Bibi decides to go all the way and, with razor and scalpel, just about get out of her skin-or help a friend out of his. But Bibi is bent and invents endless injustices on Tess's part so that she can justify more scars, pain, and body metal. Later, even more beringed through all the lips on her body, Bibi returns and seduces Tess into her first lesbian tie.
Then Bibi's lover Paul is killed during one show, the Surgeons fold, and Bibi splits from Tess, who desponds. Together with some dirty young dudes and studs who are artists in explosives and weird soundtapes and strobe lights, they form a group called the Surgeons and put on Grand Guignol horror shows that make them famous among subcultures. Bibi brings it, making love-dances to the sharp-edged pieces that leave her ripped and bleeding. Which can be hard on the reader.) Into Tess's life creeps Bibi, a dancer turned artist in body metal, blood, burns, scars, and pain. (Koja at times follows the imitative fallacy and welds scrap sentences into Burroughs-like cutup paragraphs that mimic her heroine's sculpture. Unlike many in the field, who shape abstracts out of found objects, Tess does her own welding.
Metal sculptor Tess Bajac's days are spent scrabbling through junkyards, scraping bucks together through odd jobs as a welder, and soldering poems in steel. Koja fulfills Abyss's hopes with a savage hymn to industrial culture-a first hardcover whose breakthrough originality is unique but will leave many fighting off its overload. Torqued! Twisted, man, as the new Abyss line plunges forward with its plan to advance through the frontiers of psychological horror.