Alex became a tattoo artist in his teens in the late 70's following art school. He opened the first real custom tattoo shop in London: 'Into You' and has tattooed many celebrities. 23 years in the game, Alex shares with us his insight into the tattoo world.
1000 LONDONERS
This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a five-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view.
1000londoners.com
youtube.com/1000londoners
facebook.com/1000londoners
Twitter: @1000_londoners
1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit chocolatefilms.com
Transcript:
If I wasn't tattooing, what would I be doing? Well if I'd never, what I'd be doing now in my life is raising chickens probably. The great thing about tattooing is that you make art but you're not stuck with it, it's not all hanging around the house, it walks away from you. It's something that I've learnt to do, to focus and concentrate for that amount of time and it is tiring, it's very tiring. I mean I do quite a lot of other art work as well and I find that.. I think that my experience of tattooing and to be able to make myself sit down for three or four hours at a time and basically focus completely, has enabled me to do other work as well that requires that. You have to be pretty disciplined with tattooing. Now in modern contemporary culture, things are so complex . The kind of ways that money and power and information and what have you are exchanged and move around the world and it's a very complicated circle. Whereas tattooing to me seems so simple and straightforward. I tattoo you, you pay me. Or even better swap for goods. I love a swap, a good tattoo swap. Nothing like it. One of the more interesting swaps I've been doing recently is my darling wife had a terrible bike accident and had a brain injury and as it happens I tattoo a man that specialises in post brain injury treatment so I've been swapping tattoos with for post brain injury counselling. We are now in our 23rd year would you believe? We are just entering our 23rd year, which I realise is quite an achievement, so I'm quite proud. When we started this shop there was.. tattooing was a completely different social thing to what it is now. It was really quite underground and when we opened the shop it was quite a risky thing in a sense. Noone had really had a shop like this in London in terms of its scale and visibility. Most tattooing was still either very old school or underground so we tried to bring it out into the mainstream as it were and which we succeeded in and now there's many, many, many shops. And we may well only have one year left to run on the lease. We have only got one year left to run on the lease. So, I guess we'll move. I think that's the idea. Keep on the family name, keep on the tradition, erm, and move. Move businesses. After what almost 30 years in the game now I kind of done my talking about tattooing.
