Video maker Michele Canevari gives us an insider’s view of Pure Morning Tattoo located in Vigevano. This historiic Italian tattoo shop is owned by Giorgio (@guntattoo) and Andrea Caldari (@kaluf_pmt) and the video gives a great insight to the craft, spanning as it does four years he worked with them on and off, either in the shop or on the road.
Loving and understanding others is hard. Making a documentary, like doing a tattoo, requires the parties involved to talk to, put up with and understand one another, reducing the distance between them to zero.
When I began filming the denizens of Pure Morning Studio, I had no idea what the end result would be; I simply felt a need to make some sense of it all. I invested all the money and time I could afford in this project. There were times when everything seemed to have ground to a complete halt; times when I was afraid of disappointing myself, and worse still, of letting Andrea and Giorgio down.
What comes across in the documentary is the love and respect these people have for what they do, which is tattoo. Tattoo is the best way to give shape to something we would like to have or be but cannot express in words. And then it remains with the person who created it and the one who wears it.
This documentary is the story of the professional life of Andrea and Giorgio, their friendships, their hardships. This documentary is undoubtedly of interest to anyone who tattoos, as well as for tattoo lovers, and especially anyone thinking of getting into tattoo as a profession.
As soon as you set foot in Pure Morning you find yourself surrounded by good taste. It is as if every single thing that is hanging on the walls or on display in the shop were reflections of themselves all around the space. This is why once I came into the place I almost immediately decided I would propose making a documentary about them, the shop, and their stories.
Between one project and another, I started recording footage for the documentary in June 2017 and kept it up for the next four years, on and off, whenever I could, sometimes in the shop with them, or else on the road together.
While making this documentary I realised how much our work has in common. Making a documentary, like doing a tattoo, requires the parties involved to talk to, put up with and understand one another, reducing the distance between them to zero. It was a privilege to follow them, not only because it gave me the chance to get to know the story of two people who lived through the growth of the tattoo scene from its beginnings to the present day, and so could tell me about it in this documentary, but above all because of how much I myself grew as a person by working alongside these guys.
