I have always been interested in the meaning behind people's tattoos or what inspired them to get what they did. So I decided to do a project and photograph people's tattoos and learn the stories behind them. It was pretty cool to hear what people said and to see a variety of tattoos. Here are you few of the photos from that project.
This is my personal favorite. Never in my life have I seen a tattoo quite like this one. The writing is slightly obscured by his necklace, so if you can't read it, it says, "daddy calls me princess". Basically it is a fight against "machoness ".
This one was for a friend of hers who died in a motorcycle accident. He was planning on getting this tattoo, but never did. So she got it in remembrance of him.
At one point I wrote down what this tattoo means, but I can't for the life of me remember. But I do remember the story behind it. The model here was in Thailand and met someone who she fell in love with and they went and got this tattoo together, but I can't remember what it means, so you'll just have to use your imagination.
I am not even going to try to tell you everything that this tattoo means because as you can see, it is pretty intense. One aspect of it is that it deals with good and evil and how we have both sides in us. I can't imagine how long this would have taken to finish this.
When I asked him why he got this tattoo, he said that it is a birthmark. So I guess we'll just leave it at that.
She's a ninja.
This guy got the symbol on his stomach because he had heard that it was the most painful place to get a tattoo. He said it hurt pretty bad. When I asked him about the face of the man, he said, "I just liked him, haha, he's asian."
For a friend who died.
This one was one of those spur of the moment tattoos. It says heart, but when you look at it upside down, it says his ex-girlfriend's name which was Tagen.
This was his first sleeve and just got excited about doing it and went for it.
When I asked him about the meaning behind his stick-figure robot, he said that he hates putting meanings to tattoos. But I finally managed to get some explanation for it; I believe it is a reminder for him to not be a robot. If that's not it, its a pretty cool tattoo on its own.
I was really curious to learn what inspired him to get this tattoo, but when I asked him, all he said was, "you're not getting the story, no one is." He did tell me that it is his favorite of all his tattoos and that he got it when he was 17 and the tattoo artist wasn't going to do it for him because he wasn't old enough, but then he saw what he wanted and was all about it.
This tattoo represents all the important people in her life with each leaf representing someone.
I personally love the green tattoo with her red hair.
This is a tattoo about life.
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