I did my first homemade tattoo about three years ago while living alone in a mansion, about two acres from my nearest neighbors. It’s a small lightning bolt on the side of my left foot, seen below. It came out alright (hey, its still there), but more importantly, it felt good to do it, like I didn’t have to ask anyone to give me a tattoo. Since then I’ve given myself three other homemades and I have tattooed my (then future) wife and she’s tattooed me. The intimacy of homemades makes them even more special than shop-made tattoos, but the casualness also leaves the door open for spur-of-the-moment, dumb, funny ideas. Home Made Tattoos Rule is a book of such ideas, put onto the skin of friends and folks and all photographed by Thomas K. Jeppe.    

This thin book (think photo essay, like Tulsa in color and with less guns) documents the culture of DIY tattooing in Jeppe’s native Australia, and later New Zealand, and attempts to elevate the aesthetics of homemades to that of a legitimate art form in its own right. HMTR‘s rich and raw photography has the close, blown out feel of Nan Goldin’s snapshots and conveys an intimacy between subject and photographer that mimics a relationship between tattooer and tattooee.

At the same time, this is offset by a sparse, one-tattoo-to-a-page layout which gives power and emphasis to each design equally. I for one would have liked to have a little more writing to contextualize these pieces. The short preface and introduction, both by Jeppe, give only a glimpse into the lives of these people who he describes simply as “musicians, academics, professional tattooists, designers, illustrators, cooks, punks, mums, dads, framers, travelers, dockers, painters, photographers, and hairdressers.”

It’s hard to tell which is more beautiful, the tattoos or the pictures of them. Both have the broken beauty of the cultural fringe, but the photos are much more aestheticized. That’s the great thing about DIY tattooing: it sits outside the “lifestyle fashion” of popular tattooing today and focuses on an impermanent and non-commodifiable nature of this art form. This is a vital, urgent art, one that values the relationship between artist, subject, and design, as well as the process of making the tattoo over a finished product.

Even if a tattoo comes out bad, it is still special and maybe even more loveable for it. And Home Made Tattoos Rule has got some clunkers! But the wide variety of designs, as well as range in quality, shows the democratic and subjective nature of tattooing. Each design is valued as a success by the artist and wearer. Jeppe himself has tattooed many of his friends, but has also been tattooed by them. In fact, this exchange of tattoos is key. (If you don’t trust someone to poke a deer smoking a joint into your arm then maybe you shouldn’t put a farting tooth on their leg!)   

Each tattoo is unique, whether shop-made and homemade, but how cool is it to have a great story involving a bunch of your friends, dinner and drinks that ends with “…so I ended up with this tattoo.”? Pretty cool.

To purchase the book: 

Serpspress.com