The historical associations women have in the world of tattooing reach far and wide,
and they continue to live on. Today, more women than men have at least one tattoo. It is easy to look at a tattoo and guess what it means; often times we get it wrong. While we may see
the physical pigment that lives in an individual’s skin, we don’t get to see the history behind it. What does the practice of tattooing mean to the modern woman? Unseen Tattoos is a portraiture project that focuses on women with tattoos, and the unseen elements behind them. This project focuses on three primary parts: portraits of the women, photographs of their tattoos, and interviews of their relationship to their tattoos and to how they view tattooing as a whole. In each story you will find a different experience, a different relationship, and a different meaning.
Abby Johnson, 22- “I designed my tattoo when I was 19 and got it as a matching tattoo with my mom. It’s a bouquet of flowers, each one representing my immediate family’s birth month flower. I really wanted a tattoo in general, specifically one that meant something to me. I love the idea of literally having someone else’s (or your own in my case) artwork on your body forever, I think it’s a beautiful way to display art.”
Anna Marie Kinney, 41- “I started to really hate this tattoo, this part of my body, and it just became representative of all this kind of familial, emotional trauma. I drew the line, like, I’m not living with this bullshit anymore. And so I was like, I want to have something that’s healing and has spiritual significance for me, and so I decided I wanted a different bird. I wanted a red tailed hawk, which is one of my guides. I finally found this wonderful gal, Alyssa Quick, at Line Tattoo in Baldwinsville… yeah, but we got it done and it looks great. I wear this with so much pride and love and now I’m sending so much more love to this part of my body and love to this shoulder and you know, I just feel like it… it feels good now. Every single tattoo has meant something to me in some way.”
Bea Kress, 21- “My favorite tattoo is my Saturn tattoo. I got it for a dear friend of mine who unfortunately took their own life back in high school, we had a shared love for the planet. Art has always played such a big part in my life. I’m not sure what exactly sparked my love for tattoos but I remember always doodling on myself when I was younger. I have a permanent reminder of the things and people that I love that I can always look at.”
Carissa Eastman, 30- “It was my 18th birthday, my mom took me to get my first tattoo. It’s my dog, my childhood dog who passed away, and they actually put his ashes in there because he was cremated. Some of my tattoos are manic, like flash tattoos, and then I have some
that are super meaningful. I got a portrait of my cat, she’s my soul cat, and I have self-harm scars on this arm too so I wanted to get them covered up with something meaningful. I do love talking about them because they’re just cool. I like talking about people’s tattoos and like my tattoos, I love it. I think it’s perks of good conversation. One day it probably won’t look great but I don’t really care, it goes back to stores in my life.”
Dyana Gales, 20- “I have a little star on my ankle that I did when I was maybe 17, my first year of college and I decided to order my own kit to do a stick-and-poke. And then I have a lotus, which was professionally done, and it has a double meaning. It’s my favorite flower because I just think it’s the most beautiful flower and it grows in the dirtiest places, and it’s also from my favorite show. I’ve been trying to go back to the same artist, but I think I was the last person he tattooed that wasn’t famous. I’m so happy to have this art on my body and have a little bit of him imprinted on me and I think that’s super special too.”
Ella Fling, 21- “I think my favorite tattoo right now is the orange slice on my forearm. My first summer after college my cousin gave me a book to read called Oranges are not the only fruit. I fell in love with it, and decided to get a tattoo dedicated to it. I’ve always loved tattoos. I love the idea of being able to have such important parts of my life on me forever. But a big part of it for me when I was younger was the idea of being able to be part of a community. It felt like every person with tattoos had this unspoken connection with other people who had tattoos, and I loved the idea of that.”
Emily Stauring, 42- “I always wanted [tattoos], I just never really had a real reason other than I like them. So, when I lost my parents, I wanted them somewhere I could see them. So my dad would always say, live your dreams. And I just wanted something that when I’m missing them, I can just look down, or subconsciously I can look down and they’re always here. And that kind of started it. It’s a permanent reminder and a permanent story and I can tell my story to others. I’m just an artist, and I think wearing the art on me, it just makes sense to me.”
Erin Davies, 46- “I didn’t really start getting tattoos until a couple years ago. My dog died, when he died two people immediately said, oh he was your heart dog. So when he died, I knew I was going to get a tattoo, I had been thinking about it, but it just hit me like yeah I have to do it. So I can understand how some people get a tattoo of someone you love so much that’s gone. I guess for me, my tattoo is my therapy. It’s just maybe like a reminder, sometimes you need uplifting reminders to keep you remembering how to think about things.”
Grace Lee-Chambers, 21- “I think I was envious of those around me that were having some sort of relationship as deep as romance. But, I knew it was kind of wrong of me to think that way, because love in general is a beautiful thing, whether I was the one experiencing it or not. And I just think love is such a beautiful thing to both witness and experience, and I’ve learned to be content with either, and I’ve constantly just reminded myself of this and recognize that to show love is an active choice, and to not be spiteful or envious, even when I’m not the one receiving it. I get tattoos, one, because I think it’s a beautiful form of self-expression. I think you can learn a lot about a person and their tattoos and hear a lot of beautiful stories. And then, two, I just love how random and spontaneous they can be. Tattoos, you know, can tell you about a person. They can leave you wondering about one just as much. Three it’s just a really beautiful artwork, and I’ve always admired artists and their skills that they are able to put out into the world and onto people.”
Caitlin Lewis, 23- “A lot of my tattoos I’ve tried to mirror each other… so I have a lot of life and death, and you know good and bad kind of stuff on me. I grew up on, like, really old cartoons from line, anywhere between the 30s and 50s, so I have a lot of my favorite old cartoons. [Tattoos are] art to me. You know, I don’t really have a lot of meaning to any of my tattoos, so to me, I’m just like, I want to be covered in art.”
Kyra Scoville, 26- “My mom wasn’t thrilled about the side of my face, but I plan on doing the other side too eventually. I’ve hit a point where if job requirements are for me to not be myself and express myself, then I don’t want to work there. I’m a very impulsive person, So I’m like yes that’s it let’s do it. So typically if I see a flash design or something that I really like, I’m like okay let’s think about this, and then I think about it for maybe five minutes. I like the idea of just being a collage of art work. I’ll really like an idea, and then look and see if I have blank space and I’m like, yeah let’s do it.”
Mei Bucher, 22- “It was an impulsive thing, I just decided one day that I wanted to get a tattoo. My tattoo means ambition in Chinese. Ambition is the driving force in my life, so I decided to get this tattoo because it is a permanent reminder of my goal in life, which is to succeed and rise to the top. When I feel dejected or my will to persevere dwindles, I look to my tattoo of what I need to live up to.”
Ruby Q, 26- “This is my first one, it’s called madness and that’s my first short film’s title. I have always included the word mad, and I think the word is just so powerful to me. I sometimes feel like when I have a strong connection with certain words or like, certain meanings…when I have a strong feeling, like I cannot stop talking about it or writing about it, I was like, okay, that’s time. It’s become part of me.”
Sabrina Harris, 28- “I’m a tattoo artist, I’ve been doing art my entire life and when I was growing up Ink Master and LA Ink first became a thing so I feel like maybe I just saw that stuff and I was like, oh my god, it’s so cool because no one in my family has tattoos. A couple of [my tattoos] have meaning, but most of them are just because I thought they were cool. I know I just think they’re the coolest thing ever. Ever since I was little, nothing has been cooler than getting tattoos, doing tattoos, having tattoos…yeah I just love it.”
Talia Brown, 20- “I kind of wanted a first tattoo that like, I wouldn’t regret. I wanted something I know that I love and something that I would actually want to have on my body forever. I was going through so many different [options] and I was like, I love this flower so much and it means so much to me. I always thought tattoos] looked cool. I feel so cool, I feel the coolest.”
Willow Murphy, 38- “I have 43 tattoos, four that I did not do myself. The reason I started tattooing myself was to get away from cutting. Those with mental illness know that cutting can be really difficult to get away from.[Tattooing], it became an art form for me to do instead of harming myself. I was able to put art on myself. Then this one, done professionally, has my dad’s ashes mixed in with it. The tattoo itself doesn’t feel any different, but knowing that I have a piece of my dad with me no matter where I go is really big to me.”