Pain? What Pain?

On Saturday I went to The Body Art Expo at the Cow Palace, an event that brought in hundreds of tattoo artists from all over the nation and tens of thousands of attendees. Many visitors started new tattoos, and as a correspondent for the SF Daily, I was there to both shoot and write about the event.

Today one of my photos was the front page photo as Renee Jean, 23, gets a prior tattoo corrected by Dodge (who like many people in the tattoo business just goes by a single name). Renee had just gone to a tattoo shop and on her 18th birthday and picked something from the wall, this makeover one was more meaningful, a lotus blossom (a flower that means rebirth like her first name does), with a pearl, her birthstone. (Click on image to see larger cover.)


Inside, the story , "Some say tattoos don't hurt" many of the people I talked with didn't find the experience that painful at all including Renee on the cover who compared it to getting her back scratched. (Click on either image to enlarge to read story.)

Wilfredo Castano, my photo professor at DeAnza College, a school I attended for a year before transferring to San Jose State University, told me that even when I'm shooting a color photo I'm thinking in black and white, an assesment I agreed with a lot. I was conciously thinking black and white as I shot the expo and I really like how the lines and details came out.

As Professor Castano told me, "Sometimes by taking away the color, you get a more realistic and honest picture of what was there, you make the viewer really grasp the subject."

I'm still a huge fan of color, though. Here are my favorites in color:



This was the photo that really started me thinking about the no pain concept, Jesus Hernandez talks on his phone while Javier Espinoza puts on his tattoo. Hernandez was just smiling and joking the whole time. Other attendees ate lunch, drank beverages and even tried to sleep during the process.

As Daryle Fountain puts a foot tattoo on Lisa Barbazota, she lets me interview her and says that the small amount of pain is worth having the design she really wants (a lady bug on a sunflower) added to her body. Barbazoto told me that having a lady bug land on your foot means you will have good luck.

Shawn Barber, a painter and apprentice tattooer, has traveled the world painting tattooed artists (other painters and many tattoo artists), who, like himself are tattooed. Here he is painting a portrait of fellow painter, Amanda Lynn. Barber's new show, "Tattooed Portraits II," will open at The Shooting Gallery on Larkin Ave on May 5th.



Michael Barron, 45, was one of the few people who told me that the process did hurt. He was getting his tattoo, a large rendition of the Archangel Michael, put on his back by Matthew Hamlet, to help him deal with adversity.



Most of the attendees fit into a neat demographic section of young with tattoos or piercings. Not these folks, though, Mary and Grady Proctor, both 57, came to learn about the artwork, though neither had or would even consider getting a tatoo. They likened the experience to going to a museum and were pleased that no one treated them as strange for having attended.

Here they are watching Tim Goodrich finish up a tattoo, a Chinese character for loyalty, on Lawrence Pratt.