IT’S NOT EASY TO DO SOMETHING NEW in body modification. In fact, many of the procedures we think of as cutting edge today have actually existed for hundreds of years as tribal rites, before being adopted by the current generation.

As that’s the case, a lot of the body mod stories we see don’t provoke much of a reaction. However, these pictures raised more than a few eyebrows when they arrived in Bizarre’s inbox.

Shawn Hanselman, the snapper behind these images, wanted to do a marionette-style shoot for a while. “I’ve always thought most of us are just puppets, and I wanted an edgy way to express that,” he says.