LEE Wagstaff, speaking of his Shroud believes that the imagery for his tattoos “derives strongly from my religious upbringing and consists of symbols and patterns that are found in almost every culture in the world” or, as the US tattoo artist Dragonfly puts it, “For me there is a connection between tattooing and painting... Art, the body and self-expression”.
This book is about the complex culture practised by tattoo artists in the five boroughs of New York City, where the electric tattoo machine was developed and where tattooing was pushed underground in the early 1960s when it was banned in New York, to be re-legalised in 1997. Through conversations meet artists Snake Eyes, Nathan Rainwater, “Outlaw” Miguel Valentin and “Lil Bit”, and from Coney Island, Eak, the Man Who Tattooed His Face With Outer Space, who says: “If I’m sitting in a subway car, I’m the one who stands out. You lose a sense a privacy...”
In Manhattan conversation in tattoo shops is lofty, with much talk of design choices and colour tones, using the language of art, but it does come with the territory, while in Brooklyn tattoo idol Tony Polito, The Mechanic, has been tattooing the basic backbone images of the trade since the late 1950s. Not for him the “artsy” new art designs: “Looking in the window of a tattoo shop you wouldn’t know what it was. It looks like a wallpaper shop.” One for admirers/collectors of the tattoo as art.
Getting under the skin
Tattooing New York City: Style and Continuity in a Changing Art Form by Michael McCabe, published by Schiffer Publishing Co, USA. ISBN 0764313886 and available in the UK at £24.95 from Bushwood Books, 6 Marksbury Avenue, Kew Gardens, Surrey TW9 4JF. email: bushwd@aol.com
