This book is a compendium of symbols with sacred meanings, perfect for anyone looking to find a meaningful tattoo design, professional tattoo artists or anyone interested in folklore and religion.

It gathers some of the most popular and lesser known signs from around the world in a comprehensive and accessible guide. Looking at each symbol's history and origins, it unveils the cultural and spiritual significance, alongside any folklore to give each image context, and showcases different tattoo styles for those seeking inspiration or just a fresh approach to a traditional design.

The directory includes 75-100 lead symbols and themes, reflecting the way these develop and emerge across different folklore and religions. Each of these has an accessible list of meanings as well as a list of key uses and context to where the sacred origins lie.

This beautifully illustrated guide delves deep into the meaning and significance of different tattoo symbols, exploring the rich cultural history around the world of this widespread form of body art. Tattoos are everywhere: one in three of us has at least one. Body art is one of the most popular ways of expressing our identity and beliefs. But whether we're aware of it or not when we choose a design to be permanently inked on our skin, a complex language of meanings lies behind the visuals we choose. A lotus flower, koi carp swimming upstream or a dragon rising towards the sun: in the language of tattoos these are all symbols of strength and overcoming adversity. This book uncovers the meanings behind tattoo symbols, delving into the history of the most popular motifs that recur in many different tattoo styles, including tribal, traditional, Japanese and realistic. Over 130 symbols are grouped according to their meanings, whether it's good luck, freedom, wisdom, power, spirituality or love. Each symbol is illustrated with stunning, specially drawn visuals by acclaimed artist and tattooist Oliver Munden, and accompanied by an explanation by tattoo expert Nick Schonberger which delves into its history, significance and application in tattooing. Both a visual delight and a fascinating insight into the rich cultural heritage of tattooing, this is the perfect book for anyone wanting to learn more about tattoo symbolism, in need of inspiration for their next tattoo, or who just loves tattoo art.

Drawing on the works of a number of postmodern theorists, this study suggests that the tattooed body is symptomatic of a general process of marking and being marked and is a social production of identity and difference. Shifting the focus away from what the tattooed body means to what it does, this work analyzes how it functions and what effects it produces. It challenges the ways in which identity and difference are discursively produced, particularly in psychological, criminological, and counter-cultural discourses. The writings of such theorists as Foucault, Levinas, Barthes, and Lingis are scrutinized to reveal how their discourse interprets the tattooed body as simply an aberrant threat to the body or simply a positive counter-cultural challenge. These theories are supplanted with this unique approach to notions of subjectivity, textuality, ethics, and pleasure and to the relationships among them.

This examination of the role of the body in social, political, and ethical relations will attract scholars from a number of disciplines, including cultural studies, gender studies, philosophy, visual arts, sociology, and English. It will also appeal to critics and practitioners in contemporary practices of body modification.

The evolution of tattoo art in America is spread before you in 265 impressive original tattoo flash sheets and insightful text written by a tattoo artist who has designed on his own since 1960. Military, religious, figural, animal, and nature themes are displayed among the many hundred designs. Changes in tattoo art over the years is shown as well as the trend today to return to earlier designs. Individual artists are listed, along with others who altered designs. This book will be an endless source of inspiration, for those who are passionate about tattoo art.

Learn the proper techniques in creating and applying a tattoo stencil through an illustrated step-by-step guide. A gallery of original illustrations created by the authors for their clients, displays the new direction of skin art from an artist's perspective. This takes the reader on a journey of the designs in the street shop tattoo studio looking at Old School designs, New School, and New Old School styles that have driven tattoo design to a new level that combines styles to create new forms. Skulls, crosses, hearts, flames, knives, creatures, machines and adaptive designs are featured here.

What happens to body arts when these aesthetic practices assume fresh significance in the context of modernity? In many parts of the indigenous world, the realm of body arts has become an arena for innovation, debate, revival and repression under the conditions of modernity. Among some groups, formerly suppressed 'traditions' of body arts have recently been revived. Elsewhere, body arts have been the means for creating or renovating identities in response to a developing international tourist market and in the light of novel technologies of representation, such as photography and film. The contributions to this volume draw together ideas emerging from the anthropology of the body, the western interest in body ornamentation of the 'Other', and the recent revival of specific body arts such as tattooing and piercing. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from Amazonia, Indonesia, Africa, Melanesia and Polynesia, this volume shows how bodily presentation plays a fundamental role in contemporary identity politics in tension with encompassing national and global stereotypes, which may in turn both constrain and empower local traditions.

Are you one of the thousands who would like to forego the daily ritual of applying makeup? Do you yearn for faultless eyeliner, perfectly shaped eyebrows, and beautifully outlined lips? Whether your hands are not as steady as you would like, you are allergic to ordinary cosmetics, or you simply want to save time, permanent makeup will help you feel effortlessly beautiful from morning to night. This procedure, which originated in Asia and is sweeping across Europe and America, can also conceal scars and put the finishing touches on cosmetic or plastic surgery. Before taking such an important step, however, there are many questions to be answered. Written by a specialist in the field and featuring many before and after photos, this book provides detailed information on what permanent makeup can do, who benefits from it, how much it costs, finding and working with the right professional, advantages and disadvantages and much more. Those interested in becoming practitioners will also find valuable information on color theory, equipment, certification, state regulations, and professional associations. This fascinating book is a must for permanent makeup practitioners, cosmetic surgeons, tattoo artists, and those who want to improve their self-image, poise, and appearance once and for all.

In analyses of tattoo contests, advertising, and modern primitive photographs, the book shows how images of tattooed bodies communicate and disrupt notions of gender, class, and exoticism through their discursive performances. Fenske suggests working within dominant discourse to represent and subvert oppressive gender and class evaluations.

This volume of drawings and photographs completes the "Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia" trilogy. Danzig Baldaev's unparallelled ethnographic achievement, documenting more than 3,000 tattoo drawings, was made during a lifetime working as a prison guard. His recording of this esoteric world was reported to the KGB, who unexpectedly supported him, realizing the importance of being able to establish facts about convicts by reading the images on their bodies. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics and alcohol. A medieval knight is surrounded by the severed heads of his enemies, a naked woman simultaneously services a man and two dwarfs, a crying President Gorbachev grips a human bone between sabre-like fangs, a group of angels drink vodka with God on a cloud--the meanings of these arresting images are explained to the uninitiated eye. Sergei Vasiliev's graphic photographs show the grim reality of the Russian prison system and some of the alarming characters that inhabit it, while the illustrated criminals of Russia tell the tale of their closed society. This volume, the last in the trilogy, includes an introduction by historian Alexander Sidorov exploring the origins of the Russian criminal tattoo and their various meanings today.

Enter a visual smorgasbord of tattoo imagery. Hundreds of photographs, thousands of tattoos. This incredible assembly of historic tattoo images dates back to the invention of the camera and follows the art form's progression through the 1970s. Here is a celebration of tattoo and people who enjoy the art form. The images document tattoo designs varying from testaments of love and military badges, religious imagery, and tribal markings. Shown are circus performers who exhibit neck-to-toe art; Navy boys who proudly sport new sets of sails, and men and women who show off lifetime collections. Here, too, are the daring young women who defied convention by tattooing and piercing their bodies during the early 1960s and '70s.