22/04/2024
A tattoo machine injecting ink into a block of gel.
The needles move up and down at around 200 times per second to deposit ink underneath the second layer of your skin, the dermis. I used a ballistic gel block, as it’s very similar to the skin and allows me to capture what happens inside the skin. The holes the needles leave behind quickly fill up with ink, creating 4mm long feather-like spikes that can only be seen from the side. After washing away the ink on top of the skin, these spikes are left behind, forming the final tattoo.