Tattooing is an ancient practice with profound religious and cultural significance. While western tattooing centers on three main traditions - Polynesian, Japanese and Euro-American - it has been recorded more or less everywhere. Beginning with the birth of the tattoo, John Miller explores this unique expression of personal, cultural and national identity, the tension between tattoo's status as a fashion item and its roots in subculture, and the relevance of magic - a crucial part of tattooing's origins - in contemporary society. As the inherent shock factor of tattoos decreases, tattoos are becoming more extensive, public and challenging in response, prompting an upsurge in avant-garde tattoo projects and 'extreme' tattooing. The Philosophy of Tattoos investigates the innate human desire to mark the skin, and what tattooing might tell us about that obsessively asked question: what does it mean to be human?

The essays collected in Tattooed Bodies draw on a range of theoretical paradigms and empirical knowledge to investigate tattoos, tattooing, and our complex relations with marks on skin. Engaging with diverse disciplinary perspectives in art history, continental philosophy, media studies, psychoanalysis, critical theory, literary studies, biopolitics, and cultural anthropology, the volume reflects the sheer diversity of meanings attributed to tattoos throughout history and across cultures. Essays explore conceptualizations of tattoos and tattooing in Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan, Agamben, and Jean-Luc Nancy, while utilizing theoretical perspectives to interpret tattoos in literary works by Melville, Beckett, Kafka, Genet, and Jeff VanderMeer, among others. Tattooed Bodies prompts readers to explore a few significant questions: Are tattoos unique phenomena or an art medium in need of special theoretical exploration? If so, what conceptual paradigms and theories might best shape our understanding of tattoos and their complex ubiquity in world cultures and histories?

How do you fight despair and learn to meet the world with a loving heart? How do you overcome shame? Stay faithful in spite of failure? No matter where people live or what their circumstances may be, everyone needs boundless, restorative love. Gorgeous and uplifting, Tattoos on the Heart amply demonstrates the impact unconditional love can have on your life. As a pastor working in a neighborhood with the highest concentration of murderous gang activity in Los Angeles, Gregory Boyle created an organization to provide jobs, job training, and encouragement so that young people could work together and learn the mutual respect that comes from collaboration. Tattoos on the Heart is a breathtaking series of parables distilled from his twenty years in the barrio. Arranged by theme and filled with sparkling humor and glowing generosity, these essays offer a stirring look at how full our lives could be if we could find the joy in loving others and in being loved unconditionally. From giant, tattooed Cesar, shopping at JCPenney fresh out of prison, we learn how to feel worthy of God’s love. From ten-year-old Lula we learn the importance of being known and acknowledged. From Pedro we understand the kind of patience necessary to rescue someone from the darkness. In each chapter we benefit from Boyle’s wonderful, hard-earned wisdom. Inspired by faith but applicable to anyone trying to be good, these personal, unflinching stories are full of surprising revelations and observations of the community in which Boyle works and of the many lives he has helped save. Erudite, down-to-earth, and utterly heartening, these essays about universal kinship and redemption are moving examples of the power of unconditional love in difficult times and the importance of fighting despair. With Gregory Boyle’s guidance, we can recognize our own wounds in the broken lives and daunting struggles of the men and women in these parables and learn to find joy in all of the people around us. Tattoos on the Heart reminds us that no life is less valuable than another.

Say "body modifications" and most people think of tattoos and piercings. They associate these mainly with the urban primitives of the 1980s to today and with primitive tribes. In fact, as this fascinating book shows, body mods have been on the scene since ancient times, traceable as far back as 1.5 million years, and they also encompass sacrification, branding, and implants. Professor John Rush outlines the processes and procedures of these radical physical alterations, showing their function as rites of passage, group identifiers, and mechanisms of social control. He explores the use of pain for spiritual purposes, such as purging sin and guilt, and examines the phenomenon of accidental cuts and punctures as individual events with sometimes profound implications for group survival. Spiritual Tattoo finds a remarkable consistency in body modifications from prehistory to the present, suggesting the importance of the body as a sacred geography from both social and psychological points of view.

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Vintage Tattoo Flash is a one-of-a-kind visual explorationof the history and evolution of tattooing in America. Aluscious, offset-printed, hardcover tome-a beautiful andserious addition to the understanding of one of the world'soldest and most popular art forms. Electric tattooing as we know it today was invented inNew York City at the turn of the 19th century. In the firstdays of American tattooing, tattoos were primarily wornby sailors and soldiers, outlaws and outsiders. The visuallanguage of what came to be known as "traditional tattooing"was developed in those early days on the Boweryand catered to the interests of the clientele. Commonimagery that soon became canon included sailing ships,women, hearts, roses, daggers, eagles, dragons, wolves,panthers, skulls, crosses, and popular cartoon charactersof the era. The first tattooists also figured out that usingbold outlines, complimented by solid color and smoothshading, was the proper technique for creating art on abody that would stand the test of time. In the over 100years since then, techniques and styles have evolved, andthe customer base has expanded, but the core subjectmatter and philosophy developed at the dawn of electrictattooing has persisted as perennial favorites through themodern era. While most tattoos are inherently ephemeral, transportedon skin until the death of the collector, a visual recordexists in the form of tattoo flash: the hand-painted sheetsof designs posted in tattoo shops for customers to selectfrom. Painted and repainted, stolen, traded, bought andsold, these sheets are passed between artists through onechannel or another, often having multiple useful lives in avariety of shops scattered across time and geography. Theutility of these original pieces of painted art has made itso that original examples can still be found in use or up forgrabs if you know where to look. Vintage Tattoo Flash draws from the personal collectionof Jonathan Shaw-renowned outlaw tattooist andauthor-and represents a selection of over 300 pieces offlash from one of the largest private collections in existence.Vintage Tattoo Flash spans the first roughly 75years of American tattooing from the 1900s Bowery, to50s Texas, through the Pike in the 60s and the developmentof the first black and grey, single-needle tattooingin LA in the 70s. The book lovingly reproduces entirelyunpublished sheets of original flash from the likes of BobShaw, Zeke Owen, Tex Rowe, Ted Inman, Ace Harlyn, EdSmith, Paul Rogers, the Moskowitz brothers, and many,many others relatively known and unknown.

Tattoos are a highly visible social and cultural sight, from TV series that represent the lives of tattoo artists and their interactions with clients, to world-class sports stars and the social actors we meet on a daily basis who display visible tattoo designs. Whereas in the not-to-distant past tattoos were commonly culturally perceived to represent an outward sign of social non-conformity or even deviance, tattoos now increasingly transcend class, gender, and age boundaries and arguably are now more culturally acceptable than they have ever been. But why is this the case, and why do so many social actors elect to wear tattoos? Tattoo Culture explores these questions from historical, cultural and media perspectives, but also from the heart of the culture itself, from the dynamics of the tattoo studio, the work of the artist and the world of the tattoo convention, to the perspective of the social actors who bear designs to investigate the meanings which lie being the images. It critically examines the ways in which tattoos alter social actors’ sense of being and their relationship with time in the semiotic ways with which they communicate, to themselves or to the wider world, key elements of their bodily and personal identity and sense of being.