Getting a tattoo can be a nerve-wracking experience – starting with the decision of what to get and where to get it, right through to the actual needle itself. But one part of the process has become considerably easier.
A decade or so ago, if you wanted to get a tattoo, you had limited choices: you could go to the nearest town or city and look for tattoo shops, or find out when a convention was happening. If you were a tattoo artist looking for customers, you could distribute flyers and hope that previous clients would spread the word. Then along came Instagram.
Now, if you want a tattoo, it’s far less intimidating to browse through profiles of tattoo artists on Instagram than it is to walk in and out of tattoo shops (especially if it’s your first time), and you can hop from artist to artist with a clearer idea of what you want. If you’re a tattoo artist, posting images of your work and designs is an easy way to build up a free portfolio that is easily accessible from around the world.
The #tattoos hashtag has almost 50 million posts associated with it on the platform, and there are plenty of more specific communities too. If you’re interested in certain styles, such as traditional tattoo work, you can find hashtags like #tradworkers. If you’re a queer tattoo artist, you can tag your posts with #qttr, which has 150,000 posts of various styles around the world. For any kind of tattoo you’re interested in, chances are you will find plenty of artists. “Most of contemporary tattooing exists on Instagram, and the same goes for most of us – I likely wouldn’t have a business without it as a platform,” says Emma Anderson, who tattoos in Brooklyn, New York.
By posting photos of their work, tattoo artists can build up a coherent visual identity over time, drawing in new clients who might otherwise never have found them. “It used to be that you just get what’s in your neighbourhood,” says Curt Montgomery, who works in Toronto. “Now it’s given people opportunities to find different ways of thinking, so you can kind of be inspired by anything.” Montgomery’s black lines style is so distinctive that clients fly in from all over the world to see him.
Laura Harper, who is based in London, does hand poke tattoos, which use a needle and ink rather than a tattoo gun and are often looked down on in traditional tattoo circles. “Instagram is the main way that I get bookings,” she says. “Other ways include word of mouth, or friends of friends, but most people find me by searching for tattoo artists on Instagram, or me popping up on their Explore page.”
Another hand poke artist, who works under the name Romeo and primarily does ‘flash’ drawings (images he has created himself, rather than customised to the individual), says Instagram has led people to rethink the notion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ tattooing. “I see a lot of artists with a big following even though they would have been considered ‘bad tattooers’ because of their skills, or the kind of art that they produce,” he says. “That shows how the industry is becoming more open minded, and that tattooing is evolving.”
This, he says, has encouraged the industry to liberalise, both in terms of who can be a tattooer and what they can do. Often, tattoo artists do an apprenticeship at an established tattoo parlour or studio before they can branch out or start their own practice. “Before Instagram, it was near impossible for [hand poke artists] to get an apprenticeship at a tattoo shop, because we were looked down on by most tattoo artists who thought that hand poking is just what teenagers do with cheap ink and needles,” he says. “Now, we don’t need to have our technique or our style approved by tattoo shops.”
As the range of acceptable styles has increased, it has also opened the door for people who may not have previously had the opportunity to take on an apprenticeship, or whose work wouldn’t fit in. “The traditional industry is secretive and cloistered, and that narrows the scope of who can be a tattooer,” says Anderson. “As a queer, female, self-taught tattooer who makes very abstract work, there aren’t a lot of traditional shops in the world that would ever have me.”
Anderson’s experience is indicative of how male-dominated tattooing has been as an industry, particularly in the US and around Europe. But the community aspect of Instagram and other social channels allows tattooers to connect and support each other, even if they have never met in person. Tattooing can be an incredibly intimate experience, and over the past couple of years, several people have turned to social media to warn each other, and potential customers, about tattoo artists that don’t respect boundaries.
“You can warn people of tattooers who are known abusers, who to stay away from,” says Fidjit Mac, who tattoos around the UK – although, she adds, it doesn’t always work. “The trouble with that is that a lot of people will happily turn a blind eye to that because the abuser ‘does nice work’ and that’s more than frustrating to see.” This is an issue that women in the tattoo industry have been raising for many years, and one that a group of tattoo artists set up a flash event specifically to address, called Still Not Asking for It, which also has workshops on consent and boundaries in tattooing.
“It’s all about how you use it – it can also be brilliant to form communities,” Mac says of social media. “You can also see different types of people gravitate towards certain artists.” Mac’s artistic trademark, for example, is what she calls her Drowning Girl Club, a stylised image of a woman in waves that has become her trademark, with many variations. The image is so distinctive that people who follow Fidjit message her if they see artists ripping off her work – something which she says comes with the territory.
This is the downside of being able to share artwork easily; it also makes it easier to plagiarise. “One of the downfalls is definitely how it normalises intellectual property violation,” says Romeo. Laura Harper says that, while she tries to keep her Instagram account free of negativity, she often calls out artists who copy other people’s work. Some tattooers take a more relaxed approach – they say that once it’s out there, on a public platform, it’s not really theirs anymore. After all, it’s on someone’s body too. “People can be so inspired by something which they see – I hope that’s the case, and you just have to look at it as a form of flattery,” says Rene Gibson, who tattoos in New Zealand.
Another hazard of Instagram is the temptation to stick with a certain style or technique because those pieces have gotten a lot of attention on social media. “It can be hard to divorce Instagram from the actual art of what you’re making,” says Emma Anderson. “When you make something that performs well, it’s easy to fall into the temptation of repeating whatever worked for you.”
But the ability to look at all kinds of work – from “ignorant style” (which looks deliberately unskilled) to delicate dotwork or block tattoos – can be motivating too. It means that tattoo artists have to stay on top of trends in tattooing – or eschew them entirely – in order to draw in new clients. Motivation can be hard to find if you’re essentially self-employed, but competing with an international pool of talent can be inspiring. The number of tattooers on Instagram swells by the day, often with more people who have minimal amounts of training but a passion for the craft. For the new generation of tattoo artists, that’s a good thing. “It’s one of the reasons that tattooing has grown,” says Curt Montgomery. “I don’t think tattooing at this point would be as interesting without Instagram.”
