BME: Body Modification Ezine

A black-and-white photo of a person mid-air in a Superman-style body suspension pose, supported by multiple hooks in their back and legs, smiling joyfully toward the camera. They are suspended horizontally in a large indoor space with high ceilings and visible rigging. A group of onlookers—some seated, some standing—watch with expressions of admiration, amusement, and support. The atmosphere is lively and communal, capturing a moment of shared experience and transformation.

Tattoo, Piercing, and Body Modification News, Events, and Culture

  • Dual SkinTunnels

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Any time I post Gabriele’s (MaxArt Body Piercing in Rome, Italy) extremely clever SkinTunnel jewelry (which I’ve finally given its own tag here on ModBlog making it easy to see all the entries on it), it always generates a lot of confusion because people aren’t used to seeing something like it, and often make the erroneous assumption that the central circle is open flesh. It’s not. The design is like a transdermal implant, but instead of a single central post, it has two separate U-shaped posts. These U’s have threading on them so that a large top can be attached. In theory, this design should be able to carry more weight than a standard transdermal, in addition to having a unique aesthetic.

    Gabriele’s very first customer for this — he’s slowly and responsibly been doing a few of these, monitoring them carefully, and making subtle improvements in each generation — has come back to get a matching one on their other wrist, so that’s what you’re seeing here in these pictures. For those still having trouble picturing how the jewelry is implanted, I draw your attention to the picture where the two U-shaped slots are being cut.

    Zoom into this second photo for a closer view of the finished product.

  • Lightsabers will cut through ANYTHING

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I’d always assumed piercing would be more of a sith thing, but he insists that he is in fact a Nasalang Jedi. Oh, Rafa, can you never be serious? Oh and on a more serious note, you may notice the absence of jewelry in this picture, if you were wondering what Rafa looked like with the lip plates removed.

  • Two Great New Dotwork Tattoos

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I saw two great pieces of dotwork tattooing today that I really wanted to share with you. This first is an upper chest piece by Manuel Winkler at Clockwork Tattoos in Merano, Italy. This design was inspired by the designs of myoshka.jp. It’s perhaps an odd first thought to have, but the first thing I thought when I saw this was that I hope the person isn’t married yet, because this tattoo will look incredible coming out of the top of a strapless wedding dress. Alternately it will be an amazing tattoo to show off at the beach. Or just admire privately in the mirror. Either way I like it a lot.

    The other piece of dotwork that caught my mind today was this mix of psychedelia and sacred geometry by Deryn Twelve of Tenacious Tattoo in Sheffield. I should also mention that if you like Deryn’s designs, she’s been working on a series of t-shirts with her art that will be posted to her Etsy shop soon, so keep an eye open there or on her facebook page — and the mention of commerce also reminds me that BMEshop is finally up and running again!

  • Women’s Chin Scars

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I don’t want to call these “scarred mokos”, because that would be culturally insensitive, inaccurate, and crass, but when I see these wonderful bold yet feminine facial skin peels done by Iestyn Flye of London’s Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com), I can’t help but be reminded of women’s facial tattooing among the Maori. There is a long multicultural tradition of tattooing and scarification around the chins and mouths of women being seen as extremely beautiful — the Ainu and the Inuit immediately sprint to mind as well. This reminds me, somewhat unrelated, there is a wonderful APTN/CBC documentary that you can watch online titled “In pursuit of the lost tradition of Inuit Tattooing“.

    Speaking of Iestyn’s work, I’ve mentioned his “scaled” designs before, but he recently did a set that have a double-lined border that I was particularly enamored with. I’m very excited about seeing how these turn out. It’s quite fine cutting, so the scarring will be minimal, but I’m sure they’ll still have a great tactile nature.

  • The Black Eyeball Club

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I like this club so much more than the Sacred Order of the Black Toe.

    Howie (Lunacobra), the most experienced eye-tattooer, who has been performing and fine-tuning the procedure for longer than anyone else out there, has been doing some very exciting new work that I’m dying to share with you but that is going to have to wait until another post because in this one I’m featuring a set of people with black eyes. First is my friend Marc (little-swastika.com) in Radolfzell, who just had his second eye finished by Howie after having just the one done for quite some time. In the photo on the left he looks like some sort of deranged elf-creature rearing up out of its supernatural lair, don’t you think?

    All the pictures in this entry can be zoomed.

    Next on my list is this customer of Emilio Gonzalez’s (mithostattoo.com) — all of his heavy mods (implants and split tongue) as well as the eye tattoos are by Emilio, and as I may have posted before, this is one of my favorite forehead implant projects.

    Finally, Roni Lachowicz, whose eyes are self done, and finally has her website up at x-roni-x.com. You’ll actually find a gallery of her eye tattoos (as in work on customers, not on herself) there that’s made up (at least as of this writing) of almost exclusively black eyes.

  • Noor One vs Jay Read

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I like this portrait that Noor One (noorone.com) shot of Jilted Royalty’s Jay Read (jrworld.co.uk). It’s in part the photo and the lighting, but I love how his black ear (it really is tattooed solid black in real life) looks like a piece of slick glossy plastic, as if he’s some surreal tattooed mannequin! Click to see a large uncropped version of the photo (which might make you a nice desktop wallpaper).

  • 00ga Mega-Bridge Piercing

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    You may remember the name Eric Stango (of Lifestyles in Worcester) from a couple odd piercings from his portfolio that I’ve shared with you — the cat whiskers and the “climbing man” ear project — but today I actually wanted to show you the piercing that he wears in the middle of his face. Depending on the anatomy of their skull, many people are lucky to be able to wear a 14ga barbell, and the bridge is not generally a piercing that is forgiving to stretching. Eric though, has managed to get his up to 00ga (that’s what you’re seeing in this photo, which you can zoom in to for a closer view) — normally wearing a very hefty barbell in it — with the goal of pushing it to 1/2″.

  • Pointing versus Shaping

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I wanted to highlight and contrast two very different procedure styles of getting “elf ears” from two talented artists. In the ear on the left, done by Brian Decker (purebodyarts.com) you’ll see a traditional ear pointing procedure pushed to it’s max, giving quite a radical point — very long and pronounced. The end result is quite alien and very striking — if you want to see a well-healed result, look at Tye’s ears which are featured in the last Modified World video I posted. The other ear was done by Samppa Von Cyborg (voncyb.org) — you saw the customer’s other ear last week — and involves a complete top to bottom reshape of the ear. The lobe is removed, the contour is reshaped, and a more subtle point is formed. This also results in a slightly smaller ear because of the tissue removed — I’ve tried to put the two ears roughly to scale.

    I don’t have particularly strong feelings as to which one of these ear styles I prefer — I like each for different reasons. The one produces a far more extreme appearance, and the other is more “natural” looking for lack of a better term… I think there’s space for each of them and I don’t one procedure replacing the other — it simply broadens the palette available. After the break you can see a larger photo of the ear by Samppa as well as both of the ears of Brian’s customer.

  • Starry Outer Conch

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    As absolutely lovely and quite discreet star-shaped implant by Lary (larypiercing.fi) in Turku, Finland. It looks gorgeous for being only six weeks old — as I mentioned in a recent posts, it can take up to a year for these very fine implants in the ear to settle and really be properly visible. The cute little heart-shaped daith is nice as well of course, but you can’t beat the subtlety of these ear implants — the sort of thing that must get a lot of double-takes from strangers on the street who notice it out of the corner of their eye, probably wondering if it’s something the person was born with, or an elective procedure, since I doubt that mainstream awareness of this type of implant is that common.

  • Humpback Whale White Ink Cutting

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I have been watching this humpback whale scar by Brenno Alberti of BodyFactory in Trieste, Italy with great pleasure. First of all, because he’s pumped up the normal cutting over blackwork effect by a level by rubbing the cutting with white ink — I suspect this will be differentiated from normal cutting by the detail in the finer parts of the linework — but more importantly because I just love the design and it’s pristinely cut. By the way, sometimes it just amazes me how quickly scars heal — it looks so great on day three — but I suspect that with this piece the white ink is creating a bit of an illusion.

    By the way, I don’t have an ink rubbing of a humpback whale, but believe-it-or-not, but I have rubbed a humpback whale. Click the pic for a closer look.