The New Tattoo
by Victoria Lautman, Vicki Berndt (Photographer)
Book Description
This sophisticated look at the latest high-style skin decorations, created by the most creative contemporary tattoo artists, is divided into five chapters: Tribal; Paintings, Prints, and Portraits; Imagination and Fantasy; Neotraditional; and All the Rest. A lively introduction provides a cogent history of tattooing through the ages, making clear that the compulsion to personalize the body has characterized humanity throughout recorded history. Concluding the introduction is an informative evaluation of how the tattoo scene has changed since the "tattoo renaissance" that began in the 1960s and has culminated in today's heady mix of inventive old masters and young art-school-trained hotshots. An invaluable appendix gives answers to the questions anyone should ask before getting a tattoo, including: How Is a Tattoo Made? Is It Safe? How Do I Find the Right Tattoo Artist? How Do I Pick the Right Design? How Much Will It Cost? How Long Does It Take? What Maintenance Does a Tattoo Require? Can I Get Rid of It?
Bodies of Subversion,
Second Edition:
A Secret History of Women and Tattoo
by Margot Mifflin
Book Description
From the Publisher
The first history of women's tattoo art, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo is a fascinating excursion into a subculture that dated back to the 19th century. It includes many never-before-seen photos of tattooed women from the last hundred years.
Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community
by Margo Demello
Book Description
Since the 1980s, tattooing has emerged anew in the United States as a widely appealing cultural, artistic, and social form. In Bodies of Inscription Margo DeMello explains how elite tattooists, magazine editors, and leaders of tattoo organizations have downplayed the working-class roots of tattooing in order to make it more palatable for middle-class consumption. She shows how a completely new set of meanings derived primarily from non-Western cultures has been created to give tattoos an exotic, primitive flavor.
Community publications, tattoo conventions, articles in popular magazines, and DeMello’s numerous interviews illustrate the interplay between class, culture, and history that orchestrated a shift from traditional Americana and biker tattoos to new forms using Celtic, tribal, and Japanese images. DeMello’s extensive interviews reveal the divergent yet overlapping communities formed by this class-based, American-style repackaging of the tattoo. After describing how the tattoo has moved from a mark of patriotism or rebellion to a symbol of exploration and status, the author returns to the predominantly middle-class movement that celebrates its skin art as spiritual, poetic, and self-empowering. Recognizing that the term “community” cannot capture the variations and class conflict that continue to thrive within the larger tattoo culture, DeMello finds in the discourse of tattooed people and their artists a new and particular sense of community and explores the unexpected relationship between this discourse and that of other social movements.
This ethnography of tattooing in America makes a substantive contribution to the history of tattooing in addition to relating how communities form around particular traditions and how the traditions themselves change with the introduction of new participants. Bodies of Inscription will have broad appeal and will be enjoyed by readers interested in cultural studies, American studies, sociology, popular culture, and body art.
Stewed Screwed and Tattooed
by Madame Chinchilla, Jan Hinson (Photographer), Dierdre Lamb (Photographer)
"Like an exotic veil, tattooing embraces the mystique of the underworld. In being tattooed we connect ourselves to the ancient world, accompanied by these images breathing within our skins. Like a bizarre reference library, we are Keepers of the Images. We carry an archive of images and symbols ...representing life, death and all that throbs with a vibrant force."
