SDAE Vol1: A Viking Navaro. (Patreon)

Polaroids are not archival. This means they will not last forever. Polaroid images were designed for instant gratification, to record a moment in a moment but not necessarily for that moment to live on in a museum. - Tiffany Teske, I heart Polaroid. 

It's been more than a quarter of a century since I first posted photos of Viking Navaro online; he'd appeared in several issues of PFIQ (1), and in Re/Search's Modern Primitives in studio photos taken by Fakir Musafar, but we were able to share casual snapshots and Polaroids that showed a more relaxed, candid Bud. Over the years, he's always been a personal favorite of the personalities that came out of the 1970s/80s piercing scene- perhaps due to him not being a piercer and having less pressure on him to 'create a brand', or maybe just because he was a hot, tattooed, bearded Daddy, but there was just something about him that I always connected to. 

Over the years, I've worried about the longevity of the Polaroids; like Tiffany Teske says- they were designed for instant gratification- and 43 years later they're starting to show definite signs of aging, having moved from Bud to Sailor Sid, Sid to Jack Yount, Jack to me, they've almost definitely outlived Bud's moment in a moment. 

With that in mind, we've put 50+ of our favorite images of the Professor into a new photo book, and with every copy sold these incredibly rare snapshots from the early years of the modern piercing subculture have a chance to outlive the originals, protecting them for future generations of piercing fans and historians. 

The test prints should be here soon, and when everything is approved I'll put up a post with the sale link for folks who're interested. 

1. PFIQ, Gauntlet Enterprises, 1977-1997, editor Jim Ward.
 -Issue 8. Modern Primitives by Fakir with pics of Ethel Granger and Viking Navaro. (1980)
 -Issue 10. Infibulation. (1980)
 -Issue 13. Who's Who? Meet A Viking Navaro. (1981)
 -Issue 19: Hans of Denmark: Another Modern Primitive. (1983)
 -Issue 46: Piercing on the Edge. (1996)