Taras & George

The oldest article in my press archive comes from Germany. In issue 11/1999 the Tätowier Magazin ran an artist portrait under the headline "Neue Russische Kraft", new Russian force, and under it two names: Taras & George.

Found in Frankfurt

The editors had seen our work at that year's Frankfurt Tattoo Convention. At the big conventions, they wrote, there are always a few artists whose work stands out even among the top names, and that year it was George from St. Petersburg and Taras from Ukraine.

The article opened against an expectation of the time: that tattoos from the former Eastern Bloc deserved some leniency, because artists there could hardly get information or materials. Once you had seen our work, the editors wrote, that could no longer serve as an excuse for bad tattooing.

Machines and Hygiene

The start was the one I have told many times: first experiments on friends, with homemade machines. That story is on the Skin Deep page. What the German readers learned in 1999 was where it had gone since. I still built my own machines, but they had nothing in common with the early rotaries any more: needles and grips came off, could be replaced and sterilised, as the standard of the time required.

Hygiene was the part we insisted on. In Russia, sterile working conditions were then the tattooist's own responsibility. There was an inspection service, but it checked only officially registered studios and beauty salons, and the many tattooists working underground were out of its reach. So Taras and I went to doctors ourselves to learn hygiene and sterilisation methods.

A Country Without Tattoo Magazines

Tattoo magazines could not be bought anywhere in Russia; a copy reached us only through friends coming back from abroad. Flash was just as scarce, and what existed was often poorly drawn, which is why I had started drawing my own sets the year before. That story is told on the Tatouage page.

Until a few years earlier, tattoos in Russia had still carried a prison image, although, as I told the magazine, some prison tattoos were technically very well made. Now Western influence was making young people want tattoos, and backyard tattooing grew with the demand. Taras's view was blunt: many beginners did not really know what they were doing, and their improvised studios disappeared as quickly as they appeared.

The work printed with the article shows where I stood then: black and grey realism, a crouching tiger, a koi on a lower leg above a Celtic band.

2004: The Cover

Five years later, in April 2004, my work was on the magazine's cover: a chest piece that went on to two more covers in Spain and Sweden. That story is on the Magazine Covers page.