Continuing with today’s Tattoo Temple marathon, we’ve got what’s Joey Pang is calling “Tale of Two Fishies – Part 1″. Normally this is the part where I say you’ll see part 2 later on in the day, but it appears that part 2 isn’t finished just yet, so you’ll have to wait a while before you get to see it. In the meantime you can enjoy part 1. It’s worth noting that while you don’t see any of Joey’s signature calligraphy in the photo, her tattooing techniques still reflect her ability to transform a tattoo machine into a brush.
You may remember a little while ago I posted a charming entry about Christopher doing Peace Corps (I’ll say it again — what’s stoppingYOU from joining?) work in Namibia and how the rural kids went curious-crazy over his tattoos, something they’d never seen before to such a large and bright extent.
After seeing that post, Aaron Brink wrote me about his own time over the last two summers spent in Burundi (an African country between DR Congo and Tanzania, just south of Rwanda). Like Christopher’s experience, the people there — and not just the kids — were completely enamored with his tattoos. Everywhere he went he had crowds of people following him and gathering around him trying to get a better look at his tattoos or to touch them. Not recognizing them as tattoos, and wondering if they were some sort of body paint or drawing, many people’s first response was to try and rub them off! These first pictures are from the village of Busiga.
This actually gave him a fun way to break the ice with the kids from the “Homes of Hope Orphanage” — when they broke out the facepaints, the only thing the kids wanted was tattoos of their own on their legs!
If you are able to watch Facebook videos, here’s a clip of kids:
They got a kick out of his piercings as well — this cute little boy named Brian from the orphanage is trying to put a film canister into Aaron’s stretched lobe in this piercing. At this point it is probably more common to see young people in America with stretched lobes than in most parts of Africa, where the traditional body modification practices are limited to certain rural regions and older generations.
Finally, showing that body modification truly knows no boundaries, not just across illusory racial and cultural lines like the people Christopher and Aaron met in Namibia and Burundi respectively, but also across species lines! Aaron spent some time with a young chimpanzee named Tina at the “zoo”, and she as well was very curious about his tattoos!!! (In every single picture, it’s all she’s interested in or touching).
AND P.S. Argh! Let me start by saying I feel like a DOPE because I captioned all these photos as being from “Adam” when they are from “Aaron”… and now I’ve gone and saved them and it’s too late at night to change them and still get the rest I need. My sincerest bleary-eyed and clumsy-fingered and calcium-riddled-brain apologies to Adam Aaron.
Nail, from Nail’s Tattoo in Budapest, Hungary, nailed this Mongolian girl tattoo. The realism in the portrait works brilliantly with the abstract red and black that surrounds the image.
Joeltron‘s been playing around with some custom jewelry and the results are pretty amazing. This 4pt heart piercing is just one of several that he’s uploaded to the piercing galleries.
This suspension picture c/o Sofija Marie Velimirovic of Luna Duran’s resurrection with Allen Faulkner is one of the most beautiful that I have ever seen. I’m not sure what else I can say other than do yourself a favor and click on it to see it big. Just amazing.
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