Three Issues, Seven Years

The Italian magazine Tattoo Life came back to my work three times: a short note in 2002, a convention report I wrote for issue #43 in 2006, and a flash feature in issue #55 in 2009.

2002: Made in Russia

In issue #18, September/October 2002, Chiara Sclarandi's column on tattoo websites put bardadim.com next to Jinx Proof in Washington and Into You in London. Under the heading "Made in Russia" she called me "una rivelazione", a revelation of the Russian tattoo scene: with realistic black and grey work, she wrote, I had shown in the second half of the nineties the level Russian tattooists had reached.

2006: A Report From Home

For issue #43 I reported on the St. Petersburg Tattoo Festival of 9-11 June 2006, a year after the one I described for International Tattoo Art. About fifty booths this time, in the big riding hall of an old military school near the Hermitage and St. Isaac's Cathedral.

What I wanted readers to see was the change in Russian tattooing itself. The realistic school was still number one, but the work was moving toward what was popular in the West, Japanese style among it. The organisers chose quality over quantity in the contests. Two of the awards that year were mine: Best Japanese and Best Cover-Up. I wrote that the festival was bound to become a fixed appointment on the European circuit.

Reading that report now, the line about Japanese style is the one that stays with me. I had only begun to study irezumi then, and for more than a decade I kept working in other styles alongside it. Only around 2018-2019 did I switch completely and take everything else out of my portfolio. That road is described in Judged a Decade Later.

2009: The Flash Pages

Issue #55 gave a page to my flash. How the sets began, in a street shop with almost nothing to show clients, is told on the Tatouage page, where it first appeared. Here I added what the early sets were made of: mostly Celtic knot designs, in sets 1 to 3. By 2009 I no longer divided my designs by style. I preferred black and grey, and drew most of them with grey coloured pencils.