Tattoos and Identity

"Were living in this world that's so fragmented and so chaotic that we're more able now than ever before to 'recreate identities very easily,' both online and in real life." - Anne Velliquette (Professor)


In 1998, Velliquette and colleagues conducted an interview- based study that found people use tattoos as a way to cement aspects of their current selves.
"We were hoping to look at the postmodern identity, and really what we found is that we were in this modern era where people didn't know who they were." Eight years later the team revisited the idea. The second study, like the first, found that people used tattoos as a means to express their past and present selves. But the people in the second group also seemed to need proof that their identities existed at all. They relied on tattoos as a way to establish some understanding of who they actually were. (The Atlantic Newsletter)

I think this article is really interesting as tattoos are not only seen as being 'cool' and 'fashionable' nowadays but they are also ways for people to express themselves via their body. I think it would be fun to ask people what their tattoos mean and why they got them as it can give an insight into the sort of person they are without really knowing them properly. I could also then take photographs of them with their tattoos hidden and exposed to show the different side to the person that it shows.