Taiwan, 2004

In 2004 the Taiwanese magazine Tattoos Taiwan gave me four pages: a short text in Chinese, written from my own words, and a selection of work. It was the furthest east my work had travelled in print.

The text told the start in a few lines: the needle and thread, the first machine built from what there was, years of experiments to make up for the lack of information, guest work in Austria and Germany, the British A.P.T.A. since 1998. The longer version of that story is on the Skin Deep page. Black and grey, I said, was what I loved most, then portraits and line work.

Before and After

The photo pages gave a lot of room to cover-ups, shown in pairs: the old tattoo, then what replaced it. A lioness over an old chest piece, a mask over a forearm, a simple sign over the back of a hand. Next to them, a winged heart on a chest and a dragon on an arm.

A Trip That Did Not Happen

The text ended with a plan: in spring 2005 I was to come to Taiwan for an exchange of experience and to work as a guest in a local studio. For me the East was still unknown, and I hoped the trip would help me understand its culture and its tattooing.

The trip never happened. The studio stopped answering, and that was the end of it. My way into Japanese tattooing went by other roads, told in Judged a Decade Later.