East Meets West Tattoo Stories

The GlobalPost's look at tattoo culture in South Korea today and a look back on the forefathers of American tattoo culture on The Selvedge Yard.

Will have a double tattoo news review for you Monday as I've been working through the proofs (all 500 pages) of my book on blackwork this week, but I desired to highlight three news stories that I particularly enjoyed:

[No web searches and hook-ups back in my day. I also walked miles without shoes in the snow to get tattooed.]

Jiyeon Lee's photos and story of underground tattooing in Seoul jogged my memory lots of my own first tattoos when the art was still unlawful in NYC (it was legalized in 1997). Lee paints a picture of studios with "dark tunnel-like entrance with graffiti covered walls" that are found only after the "proper" steps are taken, which are set out: "first you run a search on the net, then you hook up with a tattooist who will guide you to a nondescript space, and finally you sit down for the unlawful procedure."

In South Korea today, only those with a medical license, like Kwon Yong-hyun pictured above, can legally tattoo, but with the increasing popularity of tattooing -- in part thanks to tattooed soccer stars that played at Seoul's 2002 World Cup -- tattooists think that regulation of the art is in the near future.

The post is an amazing collection of stories & archival pics of the tattoo parlors & the sailors & sideshow stars that frequented them. My favourite picture is of a service woman getting tattooed in the 50s, surrounded by other female soldiers.

With tattoo culture budding in South Korea, I enjoyed the juxtaposition of The Selvedge Yard's
look back on the evolution of American tattooing with a tribute to "Cap" Coleman & Paul Rodgers in their "forefathers of tattooing" post. Thanks to Jake for that link.

plenty of of the pics & other tattoo memorabilia were amassed by Paul Rodgers over the 60 years they tattooed; they had a stroke on that 60th tattoo anniversary & died six years later. In 1993, Chuck Eldridge, Ed Hardy, Alan Govenar & Henk Schiffmacher (Hanky Panky), created the Paul Rogers Tattoo Research middle to house the collection. That collection moved from Chuck's original Tattoo Archive home in San Francisco to where it is now in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Chuck said:

"If they can't discover a building here,we'll take the collection back to North Carolina. It's where Paul came from & would be the right thing to do. It would be like taking Paul home."