Tattoo

Recently I was asked by a friend to take some pictures of him getting his first tattoo. A trip to Hanwell? How could I resist? We arrived at George Bone's tattoo studio early on a Saturday morning. George's studio is a collection of everything you can imagine you would find in the dungeon of a tattoo artist lair with the last name Bone. That is to say there were no shortages of skulls. After filling out the necessary forms Kevin and I sat in the foyer waiting for things to begin while George prepped his tools.

I didn't think about the amount of prep that went into getting the tattoo stenciled into the right place before any of the ink would be applied. In this case there were four iterations of the stencil before George and Kevin were happy that it was straight. You could tell George was an old pro and perfectionist when it came to getting things lined up and wasn't worried about taking as much time as needed to get it right. It's permanent so that's a good thing.



The rest of the journey and more pics after you click "read more"






Once George went to work the whole piece took around an hour and fifteen minutes. While Kevin seemed to slip into this trace like state, possibly induced by Tangerine Dream's(see also early German Prog) album Cyclone playing on a constant loop, on the table I took pictures and talked with George. This was kind of odd at first as I felt like I was an outsider looking in on this somewhat intimate artistic session. It felt like any thing I said might through George off or become a distraction. I soon realized that after 36 years of experience George not only was comfortable having a conversation but probably could have played chess at the same time.









Once the piece was done things moved pretty quickly. A few instructions on what needed to be done to keep things healing quickly, Kevin, his new tattoo and I were out the door and headed back into reality. The whole experience was a little surreal possibly because of the skulls and German electro Prog but it was also very voyeuristic from my perspective. I'm sure George remembers the first tattoo he ever did but who knows if he will remember the 2 Americans who spent a few hours with him one Saturday. Kevin will always have something to remember the time at George's by and I'm very honored that he invited me along to document his journey.