THE LONDON-BASED TATTOOER AND ENTHUSIASTIC TATTOOEE SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE BIG THEMES

by Edward M. Gómez

Throughout this issue's special group of articles looking at tattoo art, the comments its practitioners and avid admirers have shared with us touch upon several common themes, including, for example, how the physical pain a customer must endure when having a design applied to his or her body may be seen as something of a rite of passage on the road to deep self-awareness, or how tattoos serve as a mode of powerful, often defiant self-expression.

In London, the experienced tattoo designer and tattooer Will Dozer is a devotee of the art form whose own body is almost completely covered. In response to many of the same questions we posed to a number of his peers, Dozer shared with us some observations that touched upon the spiritual and other hard-to-describe aspects of the tattooing experience.