I have always been fascinated by these inked marks upon the body, even those that are now faded and shapeless.
Even when I was young, I felt they were all infused with a story written in taboos.
But it was impossible to know more about these dirty marks, which often invoked a form of penitence, a need to repent, but also conjured up images of incarceration and a past that someone wanted to forget.
Forty years have since passed since I discovered the horse’s head, black faded to blue, tattooed on the forearms of one of my great uncles.
The army, the war, prison and the camps, the plot lines of a story he would never tell me. He came from an era when men did not speak to children.
But my childish imagination was able to throw me into fantasy, to one day have tattoos of my own.
I always thought that when I grew up, I, like my great uncle, would be tall, with my own secrets to hide behind my ink.
Time has passed, but my fascination for tattoos and the way they drive me have never changed.
And for the last 30 years or so, I have spent my life creating them.
I have tried to add a little more sensitivity, harmony and artistic conception to the world of tattoos.
Today, tattoos are more accepted in our society, and one could even suggest that we have lost our way a little.
What I can say now, still bearing my first tattoo I had at the age of 11, is that tattoos remain both subjective and personal.
The beautiful, the artistic, the conceptual, could never replace the symbol that tattoos represent. A symbol that will remain forever powerful.
A tattoo has no need to be beautiful to fulfil its role, a role that pushes us, makes us need an indelible mark upon our flesh.
A walk along the path of a self-taught man.
