I went to the Newport, South Wales convention yesterday. Before getting there, I spent two and half hours with a face painter who gave me fake face and neck tattoos. It was painstaking but very pleasant and enjoyable. Sam Fisher, the face painter from Longwell in Bristol, did a wonderful job and the reaction I got at Newport was quite electric. All tattooists spotted the fakery immediately and most heavily tattooed people didn't take long either. But many were unsure. One way or another I caught the eye and it led to many conversations with those attending the convention.
It was an opportunity to talk about face tattoos and how far people were willing to go. I was struck that a significant proportion of those there with some face tattoos were women. I'm not sure, but maybe more than half. One young woman I photographed, but unfortunately can't name check, has at her tender age advanced very far on neck and face.
She said she may well take it further. But others…
My first interest in tattoos began in the early nineties. In my curiosity I rented out a film that was already ten years old - "Tattoo" with Bruce Dern in which he plays a somewhat crazed tattooist who decides to drug a a beautiful woman and then while she is unconscious covers her with tattoos. In my distant memory it was a thriller with a very kinky approach to tattoos. I found it titillating and troubling at the same time. I remember that my first wife was very unimpressed by my fascination with the film.
This was not a great film, even if the idea behind it was, but whereas today tattoos are ubiquitous and so they are in films too, back then this was a truly unusual theme.
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