Permanence

Tattoo Portraits by Kip Fulbeck

Kip Fulbeck

• Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780811861311
• eBook ISBN:
  9780811875813
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Once a fringe phenomenon, tattooing is now a full-blown cultural fact. More than 40 million people in the U.S. alone have tattoos, all with unique stories about why they chose to indelibly mark their bodies. Permanence combines photographic tattoo portraits with these stories, told in the subjects' own words and handwriting. Kip Fulbeck brings together young and old of all races, religions, and political persuasions—from celebrities to suburban moms to Hells Angels. Including interviews with celebrity tattooers Kat Von D and Oliver Peck (Miami Ink), hardcore legend Evan Seinfeld, and some regular folks, Permanence is an entertaining and enlightening portrait of the tattooed population today.

Interview with Bill Smith

Kip Fulbeck: Mr. Smith, can you tell me about how you came to get your tattoos?

Bill Smith: Well, I signed up for the Marines as soon as I could after we got attacked. I went over there in March, but they wouldn’t take me until May.

Why wouldn’t they take you?

Because I wouldn’t be seventeen until May 28, 1942.

And you said before you didn’t weigh enough to get in at first?

Well, I managed . . . was able to push my weight up to 125 by drinking a lot of water and eating bananas—right down to the doctor’s office.

How did you choose the Marine Corps over other branches of service?

Well, my father had been a Marine since the, what they called the German-American War—1916. So I was a second generation.

And when did you decide to get the Marine Corps tattoos?

Oh, in New River at boot camp. We had a tattoo parlor right there, a roof over the, what do you call it—an alley. A guy named Ace Harland set up tattoo needles. There was about two bars, and four or five taxis. It was a big delivery town, ya know, with the parlor houses there. Seventh heaven. They raised the pay from $17 to $21 a month, and after that went in, it went up to $35. Then they made it to $50. Fifty dollars a month to spend!

That’s a big jump.

It was a land of ten-cent cigarettes and $3 girls. You were loaded.

And how much did the tattoos cost?

Oh, a buck and a half, I guess.

That’s great. Did a lot of your fellow corpsmen get tattoos as well?

Whole lot of them, yeah. Some of the guys who had bigger arms got the bulldog, ya know. The big dog, bulldog, with the helmet on, and the spiked collar, USMC.

And how did you pick what to get?

Ah, I just liked the emblem. I don’t have a big arm, so I couldn’t get the big bull, that big bulldog wrapped around.

Was it real busy that time in the tattoo parlor?

Well, there was all those guys waiting, so yeah.

And always Marine Corps?

Yeah, it was all Marine Corps. We had naval medics, ya know, they were sailors. They resented the handed-out Marines. I remember one of the doctors when I was in the hospital said, “If you had enough people in the Marines that could read and write, you could have your own medical corps.” I thought it was kind of insulting.

So did you ever have any problem with the tattoo up until what happened at the theaters?

No, no. You can see ’em, they’re blurry now, ya know. But ex-Marines know what they are right away. “Semper fi, buddy.”

So what happened at the movie theater? How’d that come about?

Well, when I was hired we had a nice uniform with a shirt and a bow tie, red vest, black pants. And a few years later, I don’t remember just when, they went to the polo shirts, which were a lot cheaper. And, oh, the guys, they all thought the uniform looked great, and now the polo shirt—okay. Now, we had a manager then, from Philadelphia, black lady, very nice. They had that tattoo rule, but she said, “That doesn’t affect Bill. He’s not going to lose his job.” ’Cause I was a bit unusual, more or less. And then, somebody had made some rema...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Interview with Evan Seinfeld
• Interview with Kat Von D
• Interview with Brittany Farmer
• Interview with Oliver Peck
• Interview with Bill Smith
• Featured Participants
• About the Author