Framing visual worlds. The new editorial by Miki Vialetto

When you have a chance to get to know and listen to artists highly respected for their work and creativity it is a real opportunity for personal growth.

That is the advantage of a paper magazine, that it can give space for more detailed accounts, for words and thoughts that can be read in your own good time, where you can linger over an interesting passage or particular words.

Here at Tattoo Life, the voice we hear in our heads, that we listen to through the interviews we publish, is that of the tattoo artists we have gone to visit all over the world in order to contextualise the work they do. Pieces that are already familiar, which perhaps we know because we have often come across them on social media, but which we want to frame in order to display them and succeed in comprehending their true essence and not merely their aesthetics.

So, in this issue, for example, we listen to the voice of Lydia Madrid, a Spanish tattooist based in Los Angeles, who tells us about her experience as a courageous woman who dared to upend her life in order to be right where she feels she needs to be as a professional, but also tells us what it means to be mother of a baby girl who takes up much of her time and energy.

This side of her personality emerges in the interview, and reading what she tells us, perhaps we can better contextualise the women’s faces for which she is famous, faces that are melancholy and tired but self-assured.

Listening to Dino Vallely we find ourselves travelling, drawn in by his curiosity about other cultures and how he manages to rework his experiences in what he defines as Black Tribal.

Haijin – a South Korean tattooist – has developed a passion for details and colour which he now pours into his pieces in the Neo Japanese style, producing magnificent Han’nya masks and dragons brimming with personality.

Then when we read what English tattooist Mitchell Allenden, aka Sneaky Mitch, has to say for himself, it becomes clear that in order to be a good tattoo artist, talent is not enough but you also need to be able to grow and understand the physical and mental space you need to achieve this growth.

And last but not least, we introduce you to the team at Derek Turcotte’s Electric Grizzly Tattoo, the magnificent shop in the Canadian mountains where the surrounding scenery comes inside to be remodelled by the creative flair and artistic vision of the man who is the heart and soul of the place.

And we give a soul to the incredible tattoos we have selected for these 100 pages of the magazine. A rigorous selection given the limited space available but which makes us even more aware of the importance of giving a voice to those who have poured more into this work than mere ink on skin, they have given it their very heart and soul.