Ink

This year, Age & Opportunity has commissioned photographer Aidan Kelly to photograph and exhibit his images of the tattoos of older people. If, as novelist Jack London said, tattoos are a sign of ‘an interesting past’, then this exhibition attempts to capture the history that has been absorbed into a body.

Watch the Ink interviews online.

“My body is a journal in a way. It’s like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself.”

So says the actor Johnny Depp about his tattoos. Tattoos are, for most people who have them, the only marks that they choose to make on their bodies. Scars, burn marks, liver spots may appear unwanted or unbidden but a tattoo is written on the body by choice, to remind, to adorn, to entertain.

Tattoos can be a sign of belonging or rebellion; they can commemorate someone dear or be an expression of oneself; they can be a sign of service, of servitude or even imprisonment. They are a permanent mark that lives with and on the person forever, at once something introduced as well as something that is part of their identity.

The ‘Ink’ exhibition launches on the 16th of May in the Original Print Gallery, Temple Bar, Dublin, at 2pm and will run to the end of the month. If you can’t make it to the gallery, the exhibition will also be shown here at www.bealtaine.com or you can look at Aidan's other work on his website.