Tattoo Narratives

“Images, colours (sic) and symbols reflect transitions and provide the structure
for life history. They function as reminders for their bearers’ history and
they serve as lived memories remaining on the surface of the body”
-Oksanen and Turtiainen, 2005

Traditionally the term “tattoo narrative” is used to refer to a story behind the tattoo. The story may be the reason behind getting a particular tattoo, or the events leading up to the acquisition. Tattoo narratives "re-create for both the teller and the listener not only the facts of the tattoo but the complex justifications for it . . . The narratives are dialectical in that they presuppose a questioner or listener who objects to, or at least cannot understand, the tattoo" (DeMello 2000,152). Tattoos often symbolically represent certain periods of a person’s life, either directly or retroactively, and in doing so create a visual timeline or history documented on the body. In this sense, a person’s tattoo narrative can be a dermal life history.

However, my 7 months of participant observation, and working with the artists, has inspired me to take on an imaginative approach to tattoo narratives. My approach centers on the art itself. In another essay, I will be telling the stories of individual tattoos, as though the tattoos have (fictional) life histories of their own. The purpose of my tattoo narratives is to share in the creativity of tattoo, and to give anthropological depth to the characters that live among the masses on a daily basis . After all, the characters are technically flesh and blood (and ink), and in that sense living organisms who cohabitate with their bearers. They were brought into this world painfully, they were created by the collaboration of two people, and if you prick them, will they not bleed?