Imprinted in Identity

Being a teenager in the 2000s often felt like living between two worlds: the analog past and the digital future that was just beginning. We used to go to Dizengoff Center to buy CDs, cut out posters from magazines, and hang them in the same room where our computer worked tirelessly to download pirated content through pixelated logos softwares  and suspicious interfaces. There was something magical and strange about this divide between the two eras, a kind of cosmic balance that felt very natural.

I grew up immersed in the alternative culture, listening mainly to hip-hop and metal. There was nothing visual I appreciated more than tattoos, band T-shirts, and street fashion. In fact, I spent all my bar mitzvah money the day after on five pairs of Vans shoes at Dizengoff Center (I don’t regret it to this day). These weren’t just part of the culture and aesthetics of the time, but a desire to be part of something bigger and a constant attempt to find visual ways to express myself

Being a teenager in the 2000s often felt like living between two worlds: the analog past and the digital future that was just beginning. We used to go to Dizengoff Center to buy CDs, cut out posters from magazines, and hang them in the same room where our computer worked tirelessly to download pirated content through pixelated logos softwares  and suspicious interfaces. There was something magical and strange about this divide between the two eras, a kind of cosmic balance that felt very natural.

I grew up immersed in the alternative culture, listening mainly to hip-hop and metal. There was nothing visual I appreciated more than tattoos, band T-shirts, and street fashion. In fact, I spent all my bar mitzvah money the day after on five pairs of Vans shoes at Dizengoff Center (I don’t regret it to this day). These weren’t just part of the culture and aesthetics of the time, but a desire to be part of something bigger and a constant attempt to find visual ways to express myself

The first time I fell in love with tattoos was during the summer vacation of eighth grade. MTV was constantly on the metal hits channel, and that’s where I first saw a Bullet For My Valentine video where the guitarist dramatically entered the frame with lots of effects, distortion in the background, and a huge tattoo on his shoulder. I was completely mesmerized by the whole thing… Since then, I started noticing the tattoos of all the artists in the bands I loved and felt that the more I examined and understood their tattoos, the more I was able to connect to the meaning behind their music.

The first time I fell in love with tattoos was during the summer vacation of eighth grade. MTV was constantly on the metal hits channel, and that’s where I first saw a Bullet For My Valentine video where the guitarist dramatically entered the frame with lots of effects, distortion in the background, and a huge tattoo on his shoulder. I was completely mesmerized by the whole thing… Since then, I started noticing the tattoos of all the artists in the bands I loved and felt that the more I examined and understood their tattoos, the more I was able to connect to the meaning behind their music.

In my eyes, tattoos are a visual expression that conveys duality. On one hand, they are very individual with a personal statement, but they also belong to a collective that revolves around the same values.

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Tattoos in the hip-hop world of the 2000s were mainly characterized by a black and gray realistic style, religious or gang symbols, and typographic tattoos of meaningful words or sentences. Tattoos served the hip-hop scene as another tool for self-expression, like street fashion, song lyrics, and graffiti. Eminem, for example, has a tattoo of Hailie (his daughter) on his arm, who is also the subject of more than 20 of his songs. Tupac tattooed a typographic tattoo on his stomach that reads “THUG LIFE,” with the “I” replaced by a gun bullet, hinting at the content of his songs, his background, and of course, his death.

In rock, punk, and metal culture, tattoos were generally more pictorial and physically larger. The styles were very diverse, but prominent motifs included animals (like the seahorse on Randy Blythe’s leg - Lamb of God), various fantasy creatures like dragons, Japanese tattoos (like the koi fish on Chester Bennington’s half-sleeve - Linkin Park), and of course, many tattoos around the death motif - skulls and skeletons, demons and the Grim Reaper (a skull with wings on Oliver Sykes’ chest - Bring Me the Horizon). The guiding principle was - big and bold, and when you saw a metalhead with a full sleeve tattoo, you were looking at someone who had committed to that lifestyle. And I greatly appreciated that visual commitment

Every time I choose a new tattoo, I believe it’s significant that the design is meaningful to me, but I also believe that tattoos are a visual expression meant to be etched in the memory of others, and you can’t ignore the fact that many times people remember you by them. It took me many years to decide what my first tattoo would be and what visual story I wanted to tell that would sufficiently represent what I think and feel. And when I look at other people’s tattoos, I feel like I can hear part of their life story. Because from where I come from, if you decided to get tattooed, you knew that this visual expression becomes part of your identity for decades to come - so it’s important that the tattoo has a lot of meaning.

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Every time I choose a new tattoo, I believe it’s significant that the design is meaningful to me, but I also believe that tattoos are a visual expression meant to be etched in the memory of others, and you can’t ignore the fact that many times people remember you by them. It took me many years to decide what my first tattoo would be and what visual story I wanted to tell that would sufficiently represent what I think and feel. And when I look at other people’s tattoos, I feel like I can hear part of their life story. Because from where I come from, if you decided to get tattooed, you knew that this visual expression becomes part of your identity for decades to come - so it’s important that the tattoo has a lot of meaning.

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