That made more than one score of years that I cross, with the liking of my curiosity and my artistic inclinations, various movements related to the culture underground, thus of street. That the explored ground is musical, pictorial, sexual or social, tattooing always formed part of it.
Later, thanks to my trade of journalist, I continued to track this "art" at the rhythm of my meetings, of my voyages and adventures lived at the time of multiple reports. From day in day, the richness of this universe did not cease fascinating me.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the tattoers operated as a corporation in which each one cultivated the secrecy. One did not deliver nor his technique, nor improvements that one included there thanks to a daily practice, not more than one did not reveal the job-mix formulas of inks or even the name and the address of his craftsmen suppliers.

Yesterday been unaware of, in the worst case scorned by the common run of people, tattoers and tattooed thus preserved the practice to evolve in closed circle.

To gain their confidence is difficult, even impossible for somebody "parachuted" in their world. My interest growing for the thing, persistence with which I attended during years their places of work (studios of tattooing), conventions (annual and world meetings of the tattoers) opened me today the doors of their daily newspaper. Having become myself a follower of the kind and entrusting my body to artists tattoers, I am from now fully accepted in this codified universe. Strong of this credibility which one wants to lend to me well, I have today the privilege to be able to contact but also to make speak the actors about the medium, in all confidence.

Having chosen to treat from my specialization of the pointed subjects related to the avant-garde within national media (in other words general public), I am capable to deliver documentary whose matter with the broad spectrum will touch the initiates as much as the neophytes.

The democratization

At the beginning was the body, first inheritance of our human existence. If one detects the first traces of body modification at the time of the Neolithic era - paradoxically - the forms of body marking are disappearing from the traditional companies however which they know an opening striking down within our urban regions. Among them, tattooing is with the wire of the time which passes infiltrated under considerable skins. Remaining a long time a sign of constraint, of identification or a legal and abusive mark, it saw since a few years a true revolution: democratization

First sign of this change, visibility that offer to him the fashion, publicity, the cinema or the show business, very fond of delicacies sectors of this new image. Chock-chock, recognized in the whole world as being the largest French tattoer, collapse under the requests of advertising executives, houses of discs or scenario writers in order to carry out "false tattooing", painted with same the skin to make illusion the time of a photograph, of a catch, from a campaign or a small pocket of album. Many are the creators of which Jean-Paul Gautier for example which is inspired some to create a collection of clothing whose fabric imitates the tattooed skin. Of Mike Tyson to Sean Connery, of Whoopi Glodberg to Johnny Depp, of Julia Roberts to Red Hot Chile Peppers (...) to the world of the variety (Zazie, Florent Pagny...), the stars of the show business they also marked their skin in an irreversible way.

Bringing to tattooing one will have new "respectability", general public starts to adapt it. In the United States where even Barbie was put at tattooing, it is estimated that 12% of the men and 6% of the women are tattooed. In France, since ten years, one does not count any more his followers who, without speaking about "large parts" yield to the madness of the small pink on ankle or the nice dolphin on the scapula. Only in Paris, one can count about thirty studios, as much for its crown. It is not rare to see a whole family - father, mother and child - to canvass a tattoer with an aim of asking him a council as for the realization of a drawing for the son, the girl or the mother... The time of tattooing "supporter of corporatism" seems definitively buried.

The history

For understanding this revolutionary change well, it is necessary of replonger in the past, with the sources of this world art, to decipher of it the language inherited our ancestors, techniques, styles, to tell the odyssey of it: homidés of Africa modified already their appearance with stone stems worked.
One discovered mummies tattooed in South America and Central Asia. The lucky find of Similaun (celebrates it man of the ices which lived 3300 with J.C.) also one of the first testimonys of the existence of tattooing offers.
All the companies "tribales" adapted it, y associating of the significances andor ritual very precise celebrated at the time of ceremonies marking the various stages of the life... An attractive course gorged with spectacular bounces which by the natural play of impermanency, pass from crowned to the judgment, interdict with the act of resistance...

The Tattoers

Vis-a-vis with the current democratization started at the end of the second millenium, many tattoers formerly "craftsmen" claim themselves today of the family of the "artists" with whole share. Indeed, since its origins and with contrario of what one can believe today, is not a tattoer who wants. Admittedly, this discipline is still the prerogative of large Masters (Japan, Zealand news, Polynesia...), but more only. Today, a new generation of European tattoers create their own drawings and attempt to cultivate a new style. They develop a singular apprehension of the support (skin), a vision specifies feature, technical application, composition, pallet of colors. This new vision was, inter alia, supported by the arrival in the profession, at the beginning of the Eighties, tattoers trained in schools of art.

We thus live a prériode hinge in all the history of tattooing: that where the signature of a tattoer counts very as much as the quality of realization of its work. The connexion of this discipline with the visual arts do not stop there: practitioner the exchange as the painters during previous centuries did it, the tattoers travel in the whole world to the meeting of the work of the other. Thus, exploding the yoke of the "knowledge to make traditional", the tattoer become artist endeavours to discover through his achievements a part of itself, most secret: an acute and subjective conscience of the beauty.

The Tattooed

Tattooing raises also a true step, on behalf of the tattoer like tattooed. Among the world jungle of the "new followers" of a tattooing become decorative rather than symbolic system are distinguished truths experts. And while the international "hype" resorts to it without being really implied, tattooing remains a ground of major reflexion for the tribes of the world counter-culture. In our industrialized companies where the social fabric disaggregates like skin of sorrow, the body became the frontier runner of a salutary marginality.

Why still divide this "joint base" that is the body envelope whereas one feels radically different, what one feels the imperative need to materialize it? The anatomy is not then any more one destiny but an accessory of the presence, a raw material to redefine, a provisional representation, an ideal place of setting in scene and assertion of oneself. Thus, the act to be made tattoo combat the fate of a body aspect inherited without assent. And the body becomes a vehicle of freedom, a white page that thousands of individuals "handymen" make register in an artisanal way.

In front of the popularization of tattooing, these followers push their engagement always further, some is besides the connection which they mantain with the physical pain. The building site that they undertake on their bodies partly constitute the considered work of a whole life. Truths addicts go until crossing the seas to be made tattoo by carefully selected artists. Time and the money that they devote to it - two the most crowned values Western world - is considerable.

In this step, the pleasure that they have in return when they are contemplated thus decorated does not have an equivalent, the more so as it is irreversible. The quality of the part carried out and their meeting with the tattoer, the desire that they have sometimes to collect of the parts to same the skin form integral part of their step. It is an open declaration for a life without obstacle.

The Documentary

Tattooing causes the most various reactions and one wonders about his direction and his finality. In spite of its incredible development near all the layers of the company, perception that general public in A remains very surface. This documentary wants to testify, through the history of tattooing, its current evolution and its actors, major change of mentalities in its connection. The phenomenon is hardly apprehended in its totality and the aspects which make it up in general are badly or insufficiently treated.

The film will largely explore the way in which tattooing is lived by its protagonists (tattoers, tattooed), their motivations, their research, their desires... It will go to the meeting of the astonishing artists who unceasingly make it evolve.

Lastly, it will show that tattooing is becoming a major art whose parts are collected today with same the skin... Fine bottom of the ages, tattooing does not cease giving us the proof of an elaborate culture connected to the mystic and to metaphysics. It is in many points the reflection of our humanity.