When most people think of the history of tattoos, it’s likely they gravitate towards the stereotypical images of heavily inked sailors and criminals.
But did you know that tattooing as a profession in the Western world has existed since at least 1719? For the first time, historian Matt Lodder brings together extensive new research into the history of tattooing and evidence from private collections to write a book that tells the true story of tattoo art and artists in Europe and the United States.
In Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art, Lodder looks at Western tattooing as a “professional and commercial practice” in order to distinguish the subject from “indigenous tattoo cultures throughout the Americas, Southeast and East Asia, North Africa and Oceania”.