Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.
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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.
