courtesy of google images

i’d like to thank everyone who participated in the blog and the loyal readers.

the blog started, as i say on the about page, when i returned home from a trip to toronto where i got a large side-tattoo piece of a turtle. however, as time has worn on it’s become difficult to maintain with an intense job and also the decline of contributors.

the first few months the blog saw a lot of success. it’s sixth month saw a record of 3,793 visitors starting from 703. i also had a lot more time on my hands and dedicated them to the keyboard to build on the original idea of stories behind people’s tattoos, to film where ink is glimpsed and books where ink is showcased. there was also a plethora of people getting back to me with stories to publish.

since the sixth month it’s been on a rapid decline. it flirted with about 2,000 hits and now it’s down to a few hundred. normally that wouldn’t be so bad but i worry that it’s turned into a personal blog when its intention is meant for more of a forum. i also wouldn’t mind it but there seems to be a consistent lull of no one contributing stories. so to avoid my constant badgering of people i think i’ll leave that for my job and sort of let ink is ink is ink go on a hiatus, with no real resurrection in sight at the moment. a part of me remains hopeful as i really enjoyed this experiment and reading the stories behind some really beautiful work. but it’s lonely over here in the mail box.

so again thanks everyone. and i hope you go back to read the blog from time to time. maybe when i take it off its hiatus i’ll start with a brand new layout.

much love, editor s.

a man in india with seven years experience

metamorphisis diagnosis

Every trip I’ve had always starts with a major fail. Either I don’t get my luggage, I didn’t sleep on the plane because I sat beside a troglodyte or, as in this case, my taxi driver tries to cop a feel.

Since I was a child, I’ve always wanted to go to India. I don’t know why, I can’t remember precisely when this fascination started so if I’ve given you a reason it was more of an estimated/educated guess. For reasons that are still ambiguous – I just had to go.

Since I was 16 years old, and first received my camera with the intent of being a National Geographic photographer I challenged myself to the task of photographing one butterfly. And if I photographed a butterfly – not only capturing it but with good frame – I would instantaneously prove to myself that I am a good photographer. Ever since I’ve started photographing I’ve always been bummed out about myself. Nothing was ever good enough. I always found fault with my pictures.

Day two of Mumbai, India post-pervert and I’m happy to be alive, although slightly jet-lagged. My Bollywood friend was off to work so I decided to go to a nearby cafe called Candies only a short jaunt from the apartment, for breakfast.

As always, the camera was slung around me, hanging out. And in my hands I was holding a bright yellow tray carrying my breakfast, an egg salad sandwich and delicious ice tea.

I climbed the four staircases from the cafe up to its rooftop veranda to sit in peace and get pictures of the murals. Up about halfway I saw a beautiful black and white butterfly. I walked towards it to admire how big it was and it didn’t move. So, one handed I turned on my camera, kept my tray at my left and snapped three shots of it. One in which I am particularly proud of.

my photo of the butterfly

This photo then sparked the idea in my brain that it should replace the elephant i had originally planned on attaining. For the rest of the weeks as I travelled around and ended up in Kaliyampoondi I stayed at Aa orphanage where my best friend Cristina was volunteering at. It was a two-hour drive outside Chennai in the Tamil Nadu region of India. The children there were special and good. Happy, courteous, rambunctious. I walked the kids to school a few times.

I saw butterflies everywhere. To the point where one of the kids drew me a picture of one as a present. One of the bindis I got from a girl I didn’t want to lose so I stuck it on one of the drawings in the pile – not seeing which. Until I unpacked the drawings here in my new apartment and there it was on the butterfly drawing.

So, after traveling to Delhi, Jaipur and Agra I’m back in Bombay with my friend Shak. I meet some of his new friends who also work in Bollywood. After a night of some drinks and eating Punjabi food we wind up talking about tattoos. The two girls say how they want them but don’t want to deal with the pain. We start talking about my tattoos. One of the girls’ boyfriend talks about how he thinks they’re cool but wouldn’t know what to get. Shakun and I both have tattoos.

I mention again how I want to get one before I leave. One of the girls recommends this guy who did her friends recent tattoo. He’s clean and very talented.

So the next day we meet up and I finally decide on the butterfly after all of the very strong messages. We take a rickshaw to a little nook in Mumbai. Kids are playing soccer. There’s a few rainbow-coloured roosters and chickens about. We climb a few staircases and we’re there.

He looks a bit like John Morrison with the curly locks he’s got. Just shorter. But maybe I make the connection as he stands in front of the Jim Morrison poster and calendar on the wall.

I show him the picture of my butterfly, the picture I took. He makes a basic drawing and gets to work. The two girls, sister, Shruti and Kruti came too. Kruti watched my face. Apparently it looked like I was coming out of a deep sleep. The drill was going and it hurt but, I just focused.

butterfly

After it was finished, I admit it turned out bigger then I expected. He added in the white ink – trying to link it to my photo.

The truth is I don’t care how it looks. It’s there and India will be a part of me until I’m dirt in the ground.

“To bare a tattoo, sir, is a lifetime test of endurance.”

courtesy of spike jonze's blog

i can’t take the credit for finding this on my own. i saw it on spike jonze’s blog www.weloveyouso.com.

essentially if you have any of these tattoos on your body you’re pretty badass. you’re probably also in the middle of pulling up in a black lauda 1984 (not likely) or (most likely) a black e350 mercedes, cigarette in your mouth and an imported suit hanging quite slickly off your tall, slim yet muscular build. you take your cigarette and put it out on your tongue and let it gracefully fall on the ground. you probably have a gun in your other hand and are about to kill someone who pissed off your boss. basically, you’re in the motherfuckin russian mafia and have your whole life story mapped out on your body. ink you acquired in prison.

basically no one would fuck with you. unless they don’t want to live.

“Skulls, daggers, medieval knights, babies, a horned Lenin and a grinning Al Capone are some of the images that populate the world of Kresty prisoners. Nihilistic and weird and occasionally beautiful, the tattoos form a private language that Baldayev, by virtue of his collection, has given us a glimpse of.”

-Spike Jonze

courtesy of google images

the blues brothers (1980)

on the fingers of their hands they have their first names tattooed. tattoos they’d get in the joint.

it’s the fucking blues brothers. if you don’t think they’re badass then fuck you.

“No I didn’t. Honest… I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD.”

or

Elwood: “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
Jake: “Hit it.”

or

“We’re on a mission from god.”

courtesy of google images

synecdoche new york

of course it’s a charlie kaufman film, how could it not be?

the movie came out last year.

it’s about a playwright writhing in his fucked up life. so i won’t go into it.

the tattoo however appears on his 11-year-old daughter. she lives in berlin with her mother and her mom’s friend used her as a protege. he found out when he picked up a lifestyle magazine. he made a dash to berlin and they wouldn’t let her see him. the mom told the daughter he in fact ditched them for his homosexual partner eric, which isn’t true but it might be due to the non-linear storytelling. even he’s not really sure, but we never see a gay lover anyway.

he sees her again. this time she’s much older, and dances in a glass box for men to watch and masturbate to. he pounds away at the box trying to get her attention. it’s sad. it was to no avail as he got thrown out.

finally he gets a note that she is dying and in the hospital. the tattoos her lover/tattoo artist had given her got infected and started to wilt and die. hence the photo. living, breathing tattoo. badass.

“Dear diary, I’m afraid I’m gravely ill. It is perhaps times like these that one reflects on things past. An article of clothing from when I was young. A green jacket. I walk with my father. A game we once played. Pretend we’re faeries. I’m a girl faerie. My name is Laura Lee. And you’re a boy faerie. Your name is Tita Lee. Pretend, when we’re faeries we fight each other, and I say ‘Stop hitting me I’ll die!’ And you hit me again and I say, ‘Now I have to die.’ And then you say, ‘But I’ll miss you.’ And I say, ‘But I have to. And you’ll have to wait a million years to see me again. And I’ll be put in a box, and all I’ll need is a tiny glass of water and lots of tiny pieces of pizza and the box will have wings like an airplane.’ And you’ll ask, ‘Where will it take you?’ ‘Home.’ I say.”

courtesy of google

stefania seccia

artist, someone in india

Indian Elephant

i booked my flight and got a hell of a deal. i’ll be landing in mumbai, make my way down to cristina who is two hours outside of chennai and with a little luck i’ll be taking rad pictures along the way. and visiting an old friend, shakun.

i also want a tattoo. big surprise, right?

over my right ear, or nestling just beside it i want an elephant. something detailed, something meaningful.

i’ve always wanted some kind of elephant tattoo. but i don’t want anything big. if i don’t choose an elephant, i might get something else inspired by the country. limitless choice, really.

i’ve been planning this trip to india for about four years, but dreaming about india since i was a little kid. i’ll be equipped with my very sacred turtle bracelet sam made for me, to ensure a safe journey.

i’m prepared for the insane heat, crime and spontaneity of such a country. but i can’t fucking wait.

meanwhile i’m just sitting here, watching the blues brothers. th-ink-in about it.

“So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.” Mark Twain

ink in progress is a new chapter we’re opening up on ink is ink is ink. it’s tattoos on the back burner waiting to get on you; maybe you’re saving up for it, maybe you just like the idea. let us know. here’s a chance to write about it.

courtesy of www.flixster.com

ninja scroll

this 1993 anime movie, which apparently is being made into a live action film produced by leonardo dicaprio, is about a ninja whose nemesis is a leader of a demon gang with crazy super powers.

the lady in the picture is a ninja on the bad side whose snake tattoos come to life and she uses them to poison people for a kill.

pretty badass.

“well, this ninja girl is very useful. you see she has the technique of poisoning the man she sleeps with… in fact, the man you thought you killed, was poisoned by her. anyone who makes love to her dies. so you see, she’s perfect in this amoral world.”

editor s.

courtesy of google images

bad lieutenant

harvey keitel stars in this 1992 film as a cocaine-addicted police lieutenant who has ethereal hallucinations about god and other religious stuff of the same ilk. he’s a catholic. they’re all fuckin’ crazy. i was raised one.

apparently it’s so badass a friend of mine said it’s something you can only watch once, alone. it’s intensely badass.

“vampires are lucky, they can feed on others. we gotta eat away at ourselves. we gotta eat our legs to get the energy to walk. we gotta come, so we can go. we gotta suck ourselves off. we gotta eat away at ourselves till there’s nothing left but appetite. we give, and give and give crazy. cause a gift that makes sense ain’t worth it. jesus said seventy times seven. no one will ever understand why, why you did it. they’ll just forget about you tomorrow, but you gotta do it.”

editor s.

courtesy of google images

escape from new york

snake = badass

snake is so badass his character is the basis for the snake in metal gear solid.

with a cobra on his stomach there is no stopping kurt russell’s character snake escape from a futuristic (1997) manhattan, new york. the film came out in 1981.

“tell this to the workers when they ask where their leader went. we, the soldiers of the national liberation front of america, in the name of the workers and all the oppressed of this imperialist country, have struck a fatal blow to the fascist police state. what better revolutionary example than to let their president perish in the inhuman dungeon of his own imperialist prison.”

editor s.

courtesy of google images

The original Swedish title of this book is “Men Who Hate Women.”

A middle-aged journalist who publishes a magazine is asked by a financial tycoon to trace his family’s history for him. In reality, he’s asked to solve a disappearance case in the rich guy’s family that occurred about 40 years ago.

Apparently the real main character is a punk chick who is victimized by authorities her whole life. She’s the one with the dragon ink.

The pair meet up and become unlikely detectives caught up in a village with a violent and creepy past (and present).

The book is part of a trilogy and is being adapted into films coming out in 2010, according to wikipedia.

“The fall of the Bear Gang gave him the star billing that launched him as a young journalist. The downside of his celebrity was that the other evening newspaper could not resist using the headline Kalle Blomkvist solves the case. The tongue-in-cheek story was written by an older female columnist and contained references to the young detective in Astrid Lindgren’s books for children. To make matters worse, the paper had run the story with a grainy photograph of Blomkvist with his mouth half open even as he raised an index finger to point.”