tlashop.com

Grady Harp wrote on 06/26/2011:

There was a time when the use of tattoos suggested either a military history of the wearer or a graffiti-like disrespect for the body, or something that approached bad taste. Times have changed, as is obvious from simply walking down the street, going to the gym, strolling the beach, or just people watching from any vantage. Tattoos are the craze now for both men and women, young and old, and the art of tattooing crosses all social lines. And as is usually the case when a 'forbidden art' becomes popular the quality of the art rises to a new level.

TURNON TATTOOS, a new art book from Bruno Gmünder Verlag, is a richly colorful, highly sophisticated in design, and tantalizing examination of the art of tattoo on men. Edited by Joris Bulks the book contains some very personal musings from Arian Levanael, Scooter Laforge, and Sean Cribbin who offer insights into the coming of age of tattoo art and the personal involvement and psychology of decorating the body with ink that are as well written as the abundant photographs that follow are creative. And at the end of the book there is an Artwork Index that identifies the various tattoo artists and their models as well as a complete artist index of the models who grace the pages of this book. This is the type of approach to subject matter that makes Bruno Gmünder Verlag such an important publisher in the field of photographic art.

But the book is about art and that is the reason for buying the book. The illustrations of tattoos are varied, from elegant black and white details and well framed images that embrace the use of light and shadow to create portraits of inked men, to raw close-ups of biceps, chests, and other body parts at times pierced to enhance the inking art statement, to staged luxurious full color saturated images of tattooed men both alone and in groups, to fanciful and entertaining tongue in cheek images, to highly sensuous couplings that leave nothing to the imagination. It is this variety of types of art reproduction using the body as canvas that makes this book so successful. By incorporating the photographic work of so many artists the reader is able to fully appreciate every aspect of the newly popular form of expression of 'here I am' that makes this book appealing to a very wide audience. Few will be able to view the art of inking in a negative light after paging through this beautiful book.