Photos: Intimate images from the life and work of Throbbing Gristle's Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Written by

Anton Spice

Published on

November 27, 2013

Features

A gallery of images taken from new limited edition monograph portraying the life and work of pioneering artist, musician and body evolutionist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

Born Neil Megson, reborn as artist Genesis P-Orridge and reborn once again as a gender-erasing pandrogyne, the life and work of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has been defined by transgression and experimentation. A daring performance artist who founded the radical collective COUM Tramsmissions, P-Orridge would go on to front the cult anti-rock outfit Throbbing Gristle, whose abrasive sound helped form the emerging genre of industrial music in the late 70′s. Exploring the roots of h/er sexuality within the 80′s Modern Primitives subculture and the Psychic TV collective, P-Orridge translated a fascination with fetishism and ritual into a powerful statement on the nature of body politics.

Manifested as pandrogeny – or the “third gender” – P-Orridge’s life and work have always been inextricably entwined. A body of work in the most literal sense, photos and artworks from the last forty years of P-Orridges output have now been collected in a high-end monograph that confronts h/er controversial and powerful images head on.

The images below are taken from over 350 recorded in this book, which has been published by First Third Books in a limited edition of 1323 numbered copies, 333 of which are deluxe editions only available through the First Third website, which you can access here.

We also highly recommend you read FACT Magazine’s brilliant interview with P-Orridge here.