Twice a year Chicago hosts the largest “Call to Arms” in the country. The Villain Arts Chicago Tattoo Festival fills a cavernous convention hall with hundreds of artists and crowds of viewers, many of whom offer their own skin as a permanent canvas for their tattoos. Some bring photos or artwork to be permanently inked on their skin. Others flip through the artist’s books, for the flash of inspiration that will change their appearance forever.
I know what it’s like. I know how it feels to sit under those lights for hours, being someone´s canvas. How particularly fitting it feels, to add another layer to the permanent imagery, by respectfully documenting the skilled artists and their willing canvases at this tattoo festival.
A careful street photographer will find photographic art in the inking of tattoos. When I see how vividly I can tell a story with these beautiful, medium format-detailed images, it’s clear that the arts of medium format street photography and tattooing are perfect companions.
The circles of light that illuminate the artist, the rows of ink, and the skin of those quiet ink recipients evoke photographic echoes of Renaissance paintings, the glow of Rembrandt´s portraits or the dramatic lighting of Caravaggio’s religious figures.
Walking between tattoo stations, I document the process, and even chat with the artists and the many previously inked convention goers who have come to see others joining their ranks. By photographing these artists in ink and their human canvasses, I am honoring their art, capturing their focus, their process and the detailed beauty of it all right here, on Medium Street.
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