Needled News: Marisa DiMattia's Tattoo Revue

I just wanted to bring the pain to my outer body.

These words of 24-year-old Jason Audiffred are quoted today in a New York Times article that is part of the newspaper's full coverage of September 11: Five Years Later. Jason Audiffred lost his father James, who was an elevator operator in the North Tower, in the attacks on the World Trade Center. In an intense article, part of NY Times Select, reporter Dan Barry writes:

Tattoos became his therapy, Coney Island Vinny his therapist. Several of his tattoos relate to his passions: hip-hop, money, the Yankees.

Others, though, reflect that day and those towers. His right bicep, for example, now provides what he calls Part 2: a scene, also set at evening time and against a lavender backdrop, that depicts the hole at ground zero.

And beneath that first tattoo on his left bicep, beneath those idealized towers reaching for his shoulder, there now appears a question: "Why?"

"I never got an honest answer to why it happened," he says, his soft eyes searching.

Jason is not alone in marking his grief, and the questions that still remain, on his skin. Soon after the attacks, tattoo artists in New York and throughout the US were working overtime – and many for free – creating works of art commemorating those lost, tattooing reminders to the world so those who died did not do so in vain.

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Photo of Jason Audiffred by Fred R. Conrad/The NY Times

In one of my favorite Associate Press articles of 2002, reporter Tara Godvin interviewed NY tattooers and those getting memorial tattoos. One firefighter created a 9/11 tattoo design that was needled on more than 300 firemen at Island Tattoo in Staten Island. Half of the tattoo revenue was donated to the funds for widows and children of the attacks. The firefighter who designed the image said that the tattoos have been "medicinal in helping firefighters recover emotionally."

The article also quotes Dr. Enid Schildkrout, curator of the 2000 exhibition Body Art: Marks of Identity at the American Museum of Natural History:

Sept. 11 tattoos represent a convergence of body art's growing popularity and the need to acknowledge that life has changed, Schildkrout said.

"It is a way of remembering something that was going to disappear from your life, of immediately saying this is who I am. I don't want to forget. I don't want anyone else to forget."

This convergence has been ever-present at many of the tattoo conventions I've participated in. For example, at the May 2002 NYC Tattoo Convention, the tattoo competition featured works inspired by 9/11. A couple of years later, at the Woodstock, NY and New Jersey conventions, Bronx-born tattooer and artist, Spider Webb, showed off his 9/11 altars and artwork -- tattoo flash depicting the tragedy. The work earned him medals from the FBI, mementos from New York City firemen, and the keys to the town of Woodstock, a place he was once criminally tried.

With the greater acceptance of tattoo art in "polite society" comes greater freedom for these types of expression. For those who call tattooing just some trend, simply look at the skin memorials at Strikethebox.com or Modblog and see that the significance of the art goes way beyond emulating a favorite pop star. It is, indeed, healing through pain for the wearer. And for the viewer, a humanizing hallmark to honor those who died but also practice the kindness that settled over our cities along with the dust.

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Commemorative tattoo on Scott Carrigan by Chris Dingwell of Sanctuary Tattoo in Portland, ME.

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