Eugenio
My forearm shows the image of Baphomet; it is a pagan idol and Templars were blamed for his veneration.
The main theme is the Inquisition of the Templars. Knights with goat appearance in a war attitude. A slaughtered nun and the Holy Grail. The bloody crucifix engraved with a pentagram and the head of the goat, all framed with skulls. I demonised my arm as expression of an aversion against an already written system, in this case the one of the Church. I'm not a Satanist. The 666 is not the number of the beast, but a way of being averse to what has been imposed as good and right. I have a rebellious nature and I always been against everything that is not strictly right and true.
Claudio
The image of the Virgin Mary on the forearm and the Archangel Michael on my back. My tattoos are mostly of a religious nature.
I am a believer, it's my way of being and this has influenced the choice of subjects: memory and protection. I'm a biker, but I have no biker style tattoos, because there are none that distinguish the category. Perhaps the only exception is made by the club tattoos. For example, my bikers club allows to tattoo the colors or the name of the club, but only after five years of membership. I'm still waiting to make this.
The beautiful and strange thing of clubs is that all members are like brothers. No longer matters what you've done in your life or what you believe, it only counts who you really are.
Filomena Verdecchia
L is the letter which begins his name.
I decided to write his initial on my skin to have a physical and spiritual memory of the one who has been my only love.
The idea of this act, stems from the lack of "L" that on March 27, 2002 has left us. A bit hesitant a bit spurred from my daughters, lovers and bearers of tattoos, I've wrote his initial L, on me.
I was very attached to my husband, he got sick, has had ischemia and remained paralyzed in one leg and an arm. I helped him at all times, until the end.
He was a sailor.
Luciano Pistoli
The lucky charm Dragon. The Phoenix rises from its ashes. Under their images there is an old tattoo, a scorpion with a red rose between the claws that I've covered, but not completely. In the middle are two lines, one born from the dragon, the other by the phoenix and become one, that ending on a blue lotus. It is the line of my life.
I told my story to the tattoo artist and he made this drawing for me.
I sewed a second skin on me.
It's fifteen years we are together.
I did that when I changed my life, I divorced, I left the army.
The tattoo artist used four and a half months to do it and I paid 750,000 Lire, because I gave him permission to photograph it for a magazine. I'm 43 years old. I wanted it to be a memory for life.
It is what I went through and what I would be, the present and the future.
Luca Diaferia
I chose the stars.
I managed to finish it by myself on the left side of the neck, with the pretext to cover up an ugly scar, so I chose the stars because,
what could be higher than one star?
Apart from my name, my city, my team and my date of birth.
I chose a cat with the moon. As a child I killed a couple of cats and for this reason, today I want to dedicate myself to love them as much as possible, because I still feel very guilty.
I did not have a quite adolescence and someone say that this is the reason why I have tattooed a butterfly, many colorful confetti and the large inscription "saved you." Maybe because I'm a big sentimentalist and is not over until it's over.
I was only 13 when I noticed the first tattoo on the wrist of a drug addicted. It was
love at first sight.
My father had one on the arm.
I began to study how to make tattoos and I discovered that with India inks and a needle you could do it yourself. I purchased what i needed and at school I tattooed my initial on my hand. In fact, just one year after
and with the opposition of my mother, I decided to tattoo the entire body in a more serious manner, and to date I have only the shoulder,
the left arm and right forearm almost finished.
However, thinking back to the addiction, to when I was a child and especially to the drawings that I want to draw on me,
I am not feeling sorry at all, and really pleased with something I can accomplish.
Piero Terracina
A-5506.
Stripped of everything, shaved, tattooed and, after a shower, dressed in rags. We were "pieces".
Then the separation from my brothers, a Roman girl told me that she seen my sister Anna a few times in her camp. She was bald, with a kerchief on her head, she said she was fine but that she was losing his teeth. I met her the day after, then nothing. The winter started, terrible cold.
It was not easy to learn my number in German without understanding a word of German.
I got sick at the right time, the Germans knew they had to leave the field, there was a riot and prisoners had blown up a crematorium, the number 4.
On 27 January 1945, at two in the afternoon, I went out to melt a bit 'of snow. I opened the door and saw a man covered with a white cloak, was a Soviet soldier. He pulled out a machine gun, but found that I was a prisoner. Came in and said to my comrades that Russian soldiers arrived. Perhaps you can think of enthusiasm scenes, hugs, absolutely not. There was nothing.
Bear in mind that the dead in the camps in Germany were 11 million, including six million Jews.
Of course the deportation of Jews had its own specificity because, while the others could die, the Jews had to die. This was the difference.
Flavio Ameli
Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. The Tell-Tale Heart, the Masonic eye and then the Alpha above the Omega, the
Penrose triangle that influenced Escher. The plague and the mask of Landsknecht.
Are almost exclusively in black and white. I do not know anymore how many tattoos I have.
My passion for horror literature and tattoos are basically born together. As a child I spent whole afternoons in my uncle's house reading magazines about tattoos and the books of Dylan Dog.
Overtime, I studied the horror genre in every facet, in film, in literature, until encouraging my interest in the occult and its symbols.
Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft is the tattoo I'm most proud of, is the one on my chest.
Gianfranco Bartolomei
A broken heart stitched up by a needle and thread.
Love that knows no distance, but that it takes into account the distance and write it in a tattoo.
In 1975 the schools of CEMM, in the Navy in Taranto when i was nineteen, stung by a needle, ink and the pain of a separation. Below the heart the initial letter of my wife's name.
In the Navy in Taranto.
Do you see, how many bullshits you do when you are twenty!
Not everyone get naked and talk to you about themselves.
Pierluigi Lunerti
I've the anchor. The knot of Solomon and then the symbols of the Passion, the sun and the moon. I'm able to explain all the tattoos on my arm!
The traditional Italian tattoo belong to three groups: prison, sailor and votive. All three types of tattoos are symbolically intersected, but my attention is directed towards the
oldest tattoos, practiced at the sanctuary of Loreto.
Here the tattoos were made by monks to the Templars and the pilgrims traveling to the holy land. Also after the papal ban about body tattoos in 787 d.c, this practice survived, up to the middle of the last century, so taking a profane aura.
I'm agnostic, and these tattoos are not a votive gesture, but the symbol of belonging to my land, the land of Piceni. For me the tattoo has an inherent and ancestral meaning, a common thread that merges past, present and future,
in a fusion of cultures and archetypes.
I personally tattoo myself, my art is a tribute to the traditions.
Timoteo and Nico
His image is my right arm.
I took Nico who was only three months, now five years old.
He is the first to greet me in the morning and, after a day of work, is waiting for me and celebrate my return.
There are times that you just want a hug without having to ask and give explanations. In these moments he is there.
He gave me so much, and I try every day to reciprocate his love, so I decided to tattoo his image on me. This love it is part of me and my life.
Andrea Beitone
I have two big fish tattooed on my arms.
The sea and the fishes.
Like I said, the sea and the fish have always been part of my life, since I was child, going with my father to fishing at the pier.
Then, ironically, I have been in the navy, I had for years an aquarium where I was immersed in the imagination and I had the chance to swim among the most beautiful seas of the world with colorful fishes.
I'm also the sign of Pisces.
Hi, I'm Andrea. I fry the fish to live.
Sara Guidotti
The tiger represents strength, purity of mind and beauty. It is also my protection against evil and reflects what I am. I always wanted a symbol talking about me.
Anyway I decided to do it suddenly. Almost overnight, after a period of great difficulty in my life.
I thought it was a beautiful way for a new start and to make others understand who I am. Many people change hairstyle, I have tattooed all my back.
Don Roberto Dichiera
The Eye of Ra is the eye of the peace, the scales is consistency, the arrow is freedom, pretty much. The "Insomnia". The nightclub and its logo. It is his symbol. I made this tattoo at twenty, now I'm forty.
My story is made up of many steps, at twelve years old with the first cigarette, fourteen liquors in nightclubs. I used to say to my parents that I was going for a ride in the country with friends, and instead I used to get high. At seventeen the first transgressive holiday in the Adriatic Riviera. Riccione 1991 and a vacation between girls and joints.
Several drugs, ecstasy, hallucinogens, cocaine, that I was selling inside the nightclub.
I had my "stuff" also in the army barrack.
And then the certainty: "I was burning in hell".
One day on a train I met a girl and I fell in love. It was out of love and I agreed to accompany her to Mass one Sunday. The rest is something personal, and difficult to explain.
Today I am a priest of the road, and I devote myself to those furthest from the faith with my "New Horizons association". I spend many nights outside the nightclubs and in a lot of rehabilitation center for drug addicts.