My Tattoo Project

iin 2003, a friend lamented to me that her son had recently gotten some  tattoos. She said, “The only thing his tattoos qualify him for is a job where he asks,  ‘Do you want fries with that?’” 

Although I kept my peace, I thought she was wrong. Lots of my younger patients have tattoos, and I sensed that their tats had meaning for them. So I started asking patients what their tattoos meant to them and why they had gotten them. I also asked their permission to photograph their tattoos. I collected 50 consecutive tattoos from 50 consecutive patients.  Not one person declined having a photo of their tattootaken.

I put the images on a website and for years they just sat there. Sadly, the company that hosted the website went out of business recently and I just discovered that that collection was lost. However, the photos were still in my Google photos, so this time I’m going to put them on Blogger, which will probably never go out of business, at least not in the foreseeable future. 

I’ve forgotten most of the comments I made at the time, but at least the imagers are here to be seen now. 

Thank you, Blogger! 

Memorial Tattoo 

I remember this young woman.  Her mother died and at the funeral a dragonfly landed on the coffin.  That led her sister and her to get these tattoos in honor of their mother.

 

 

 People think a tattoo is an act of rebellion or something similar; but actually, it's a form of storytelling.  It's not a random image; they have been inked because the wearer has a story to tell.                                                                                          from There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (2024)  

 

 The patient had a dog that was trained for "agility."  She was a 50 year-old woman who had suffered severe child abuse and went on to commit suicide.

 

 

 REFERENCES 

 
1. Buckle JL, Dwyer SC. Embodied meaning making: Memorial tattoos as a visual expression of grief. Death Stud. 2021 Oct 10:1-9. PMID 34632966 
Abstract: Memorial tattoos are an increasingly prevalent response to the death of a loved one. This study explored the role of memorial tattoos as an active response to loss and a visual expression of grief. Twenty-two people with memorial tattoos volunteered to be interviewed and to have photographs taken of their tattoos. Through a grounded theory analysis, the core category emerged that memorial tattoos were an expression of embodied meaning making in the grief experience. Under this core category, the themes of creating permanence, constructing control, and symbolizing the bond further elucidated the meaning making process represented in memorial tattoos.

 

 

 

 

This man was an avid hunter

I mremember this young woman.  The quote is from Paradise Lost.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven...

add Deeds, add Faith, Add vertue, Patience, Temperance, add Love,
By name to come call'd Charitie, the soul Of all the rest..

How humbled I was to read this on her skin.  Perhaps, by now the entire book is inked on her hide.