TATTOOING

I first got interested in tattooing in the early 1980s in London. Long before it became poplar. Back then it was underground, edgy and still shunned by the mainstream. The tattooists were fascinating and eccentric. True outsiders. Some bordered on the criminal.

Many of these pioneers ended up in my documentary: Tattooing: Pigments of the imagination.

At that time, I worked for key pioneering tattoo magazines like Body Art in the UK. Later, in California, I worked for both Skin and Ink magazine, edited by the lovely Bob Baxter, and for Tatowier magazine in Germany.

Back in the 80s no one could have predicted how huge tattooing would become. I am proud to say that , in some small way, I helped popularise tattooing, ease it out of the shadows and birth it into the vast global monster and respected art form for it is today.