Inspired by the work of Renaissance and Art Nouveau painters, German tattooist Adriaan Machete is renowned worldwide for his delicate and exquisitely colored body art. His professional tattoo career began around 2007 after he apprenticed with Iban Maya. His major break came in 2010 when he was invited to be a guest artist in various […]
Category: Identity & Empowerment
Secret Sidewalk Tattoos History and 20th Anniversary
Eddy Reyes Sr was born in 1975 in Pajacuran, Mexico, and immigrated to the Bay Area of northern California, USA, at two years old. He began tattooing at 13 with a handcrafted machine and became a professional in 1995. He planned to utilize tattoos to depict the Bay Area by fusing what he saw on […]
Taki: One of America’s Finest Japanese Tattoo Artists
Takahiro “Taki” Kitamura was born in Tokyo in 1973 and moved to the United States with his parents when he was two. His father taught for 18 years at the University of California, Davis (UCD), and his mother instilled Japanese culture in her children, from cuisine to folktales, to preserve their history. Kitamura got his […]
Empowering Witchcraft Photography by Helena Darling
Helena Darling—a.k.a., The Woods Witch—is a photographer and tattoo artist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. “I take photos of mostly everything I see,” she says, but her favorite subjects are people and nature, which fit together beautifully; see her Instagram for a mosaic of East-Coast eros, ambiance, and witchcraft. She aims to document her […]
Radical Beauty: Elizaveta Porodina with Lily Moore
Elizaveta Porodina is a Munich-based (Moscow-born) fashion and fine-art photographer. Her work is experimental, bending reality with colour-burst surrealism and black-and-white romanticism. The emotional symbolism underlying her work derives from her studies in clinical psychology. Featured here is her contribution to Radical Beauty, a photo project aimed at challenging beauty normativity in contemporary culture. The […]
Raw and Empowering Queer Feminist Tattoos by Charline Bataille
Charline Bataille is a queer femme tattoo artist based in Montreal. She taught herself tattooing at home as a “DIY punk goal” and now works full-time at Minuit Dix. Her Instagram, which is gaining an enthusiastic following, immediately conveys Bataille’s style and politics; bright colours and mischievous characters—sporty goddesses, flaming banana ladies, and tiger-riding warriors […]
Powerful Portraits of People from Unique Cultures by Adam Koziol
Adam Koziol is a photographer, photojournalist, and filmmaker from Poznan, Poland. In 2013, he began a project to travel and document indigenous cultures and ethnic groups with small populations. Thus far, he has visited 18 groups from Asia and Africa. Included below are members from the Mentawai (Indonesia), Atayal (Taiwan), Apatani (India), Iban (Borneo), and […]
Armour: Empowering Hairstyle Imagery by Luke Nugent and Lisa Farrall
Featured here are works of incredible hair art, photographed by Luke Nugent, a London-based photographer who specializes in portraiture, fashion, and hair & beauty. The stylist is Lisa Farrall, an award-winning hair session stylist and the beauty editor of Noctis Magazine. Titled “Armour,” this series about “embracing women and empowering women.” Combining abstract hairstyles with […]
Suzanna Scott Turns Coin Purses into Symbols of Female Empowerment
Artist Suzanna Scott reconstructs everyday objects as powerful comments on gender and equality. Her most prominent is an ongoing series of works called “Coin Cunts,” in which coin purses are turned inside out and sewn to form colorful representations of female genitalia. “In our new reality of untruths and the resurgence of misogynistic and racist […]
BDSM Gayness: Tattoos by Phillippe Fernandez
He was a graphic and motion designer, yet that wasn’t enough, so he began tattooing for fun and that fun became a full-time job. Currently working at AKA Berlin since 2009, the Spaniard Phillippe Fernandez has numerous tattoos resembling scenes from Massive (gay erotic Manga), Tom Finland and Brokeback Mountain. Leather boots and harnesses, police […]