Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.
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It’s rare to see women with really heavy facial tattoo work (hell, it’s rare enough to see guys with it), so I was very happy to stumble across IAM:coco12102 who’s continuing to expand her already significant coverage. IAM members can of course check out her page for more photos.
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The Agaetis Byrjun album art was done at Universoul Mutations in Cadillac, MI, but I’m not sure (sorry) who did Krysti’s somewhat gross-faced Gwar tattoo.
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Everyone loves animal tattoos, right? In terms of tattoo iconography’s ancient (as in caveman) roots, the first tattoos were medical and spiritual in nature, followed not long afterwards by drawings of animal (I don’t think we know if they were totemic or decorative).
Let’s start with a little animal — these are IAM:thouarttheman40‘s rat footprints by Mike Zimmer at Lake Monster Tattoo in South Lake Tahoe, CA.
Conceptually, I also like this flock of birds by Mato at Dunajska in Bratislava, Slovakia, although I have the feeling this might be one of those tattoo that looks a little better in photos than it does in person for graphic design reasons.
This pitbull portrait is sweet as well, done by Dennis at Big Joe and Son’s Tattooing in Yonkers, NY.
Finally, I’ve been wondering if the movie hit March of the Penguins would leave us with a whole lot more penguin tattoos. It’s not as if they’re unpopular as is. Anyway, I hope so.
This one is by Dave Cutlip at Explosive Tattoo in Salibury, MD. Their IAM name (the person with the tattoo, not Dave) won’t surprise you: penguinkelp.
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Check out BME employee Phil Barbosa‘s new tattoo designed by IAM:killmylovekill and done here in La Paz, Mexico at Sadofilia. Click the dancing toes below to see a day old photo of it (sorry, it’s hard to get a good photo of a day old tattoo), and if you’d like to see the painting it’s based on, click here.
Phil says to mention that his feet (well, the right one anyway) are still a bit messed up since the accident (which explains why blue robot is not as good a dancer as red robot). He did however clean his toenails!
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I just wanted to say that I really like the facial tattoo that Kaustika (who’s also from here in Mexico) had done by Nazareno Tubaro in Argentina… I’ve seen some other blackwork by Nazareno (such as the gorgeous work on the already striking La Negra) and am definitely a fan of his work and aesthetic.
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I mentioned John Durante of Laughing Buddha in Seattle a few entries back… Since I also recently posted about the rituals in Phuket, I thought I’d post a picture from his travels in Trang, Thailand (2001) — I wonder why this guy chose handcuffs?
More from his travels; here’s a picture of him and his Punan grandmas in Punan Ba, Sarawak, Borneo back in 1999.
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Check out Cybermike’s UV facial circuitry, which in theory only shows up when he’s under a blacklight. I say “in theory” as a warning to those considering a stealth tattoo on public skin — depending on the way you scar (tattoos do leave slight scars) the tattoo may be visible (and any contamination of the ink, even from the stencil, could make the tattoo daylight visible as well). Still, very cool:
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Do I really need to tell the story of the bottom star?
Q: “Why do you always have to take two straight edge kids fishing?”
A: “Because if you only take one, he’ll drink all your beer.”
O dios mio! I’m just kidding!
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Here’s some initially self-done facial tattoos being reworked by Jesse at Temple Ink in Portland, Oregon. Facial tattoos change a person’s face in fairly marked and obvious ways. This one here, I think it makes him look like a superhero (or supervillian).
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I’m really a big fan of the work (facial and otherwise) that “Tattoo Joe” out of Physcial Graffiti Ink in Bridgeport, Connecticut is doing (he’s the bottom right photo in this entry by the way — one of the few, if not only, Western tattoo artists I can think of with this type of facial work)… who’d have thought that Bridgeport, Connecticut was some sort of facial tattooing hub? Anyway, the world would be a more interesting — and I dare say better — place if more people went and got their faces tattooed.
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All tattoos by “Tattoo Joe”, Physical Graffiti, Bridgeport CT
The application of neo-traditional Maori and Polynesian designs on Westerners of course raises cultural appropriation issues that there’s a great deal of debate on (ie. do we have the right to borry these motifs in the first place?), but my feeling is that body art is universal and belongs to everyone, and in this modern global culture, we are a lot better off embracing each others cultures and celebrating them than saying “this is off limits and only <insert race here> can do this” — or worse yet, relagating these things to the realm of some “noble savage”. Body art must live through all people of the world and of time, and is core to the human experience.
