Sure, there's anecdotes in my life from early exposure to tattooing.
When I was a small lad I sat playing in the dirt in front of my house
when a pack of frightening bikers walked by, one shirtless with a giant
cobra tattooed on his belly. Even as a little kid I thought that was
the most bitching fucking thing I'd ever seen in my whole nine year old
life. But by then I was already up late at night, under my covers
drawing snakes and daggers with a flashlight tucked under my chin,
trying to covertly defy my "lights out" parental bedtime ordinance.
A tattoo is a contract between three people; the client; the artist and
the observer. Some tattoos are made to be hidden and deeply personal,
only to be exposed to a selected audience at the discretion of the
wearer. Other tattoos are bold, public statements and then there's a
sliding scale between those two points.
With the omniscient presence of social media every tattoo now made gets
placed on the alter of sacrifice of scrutiny via Instagram.
I live in San Francisco. The other night I stood in front of the
Twitter corporate world headquarters on Market Street and marvelled over
how this one innocuous looking office tower and the mechanizations
within it have completely changed the world. Governments are overthrown
because of grass roots political organization via one hundred and forty
character tweets. The first line of government control over popular
uprisings is to cut off their citizens connection to Twitter and
Facebook, that's just how scared institutional power is of social
connectivity.
My fear is that Instagram is adulterating our motivations for why we tattoo.
Make no mistake about it, I think Instagram is a fantastic tool for
artists and I am a regular, almost daily user. I love being able to
post a photo of a newly minted tattoo to my feed and share it with my
peers. I also love being able to see what everyone else's daily
tattooing output looks like. It's magical being able to see what some
of my favourite tattooers are doing the moment they finish tattooing.
But are we tattooing to make our clients happy or are we tattooing just
for likes and for popularity points from our online followers?
If we tattoo for internet popularity will that lead to any sort of
happiness or satisfaction with ourselves and our work? How many
'likes', followers or fans is enough to legitimize our art and who we
are as artists? How much thought and energy are you pouring in to your
sense of self worth based on the number of followers you have? So many
conversations between tattooers these days is bragging or commiserating
about how many likes or lack of likes their latest tattoos got on
Instagram, not how happy the client was or how satisfied you were with
your latest piece.
I would argue that finding more and more followers and fans is actually
just frosting and not the cake we're hungry for. The cake is finding a
core group actual human beings who love the work you do in the real life
meat space world and nurturing those client relationships face to face
using your art, abilities and personality rather than tattooing for
intangible internet points.
I enjoy using Instagram and Facebook to share my work because I love
being a contributing part of a greater community. I just wish that
there was an option within the app to turn off the like button.
Tattooing for me is about creativity, tradition and innovation, not
competition, appropriation and popularity.
“Work for a cause, not for applause. Live life to express, not to
impress. Don’t strive to make your presence noticed just make your
absence felt.” – Unknown
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