Memento

Tattoos are a stigma of our youth culture. While some people just ink themselves in the midst of drunken nights or for no particular reason, others actually use them as an emblem, an ideogram: to represent a part of themselves that only they know. I think there is something beautiful, honest, almost intimate, and secretive about such tattoos, especially when they’re not meant to be spectacles. This is what I tried to evoke in this series. I was interested as to why people would go through pain to permanently adorn their bodies. These people and their stories captivated me.