CUSTOMIZING THE BODY

The Art and Culture of Tattooing

REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

In those days, a tattoo was still a souvenir—a keepsake to mark a journey, the love of your life, a heartbreak, a port of call. The body was like a photo album; the tattoos themselves didn’t have to be good photographs. . . . And the old tattoos were always sentimental: you didn’t mark yourselffor life if you weren’t sentimental (Irving, 2005: 74–75).