Does getting a tattoo hurt as much as it looks? Photographer Captures the Pleasure and Pains (Photos)

A New York photographer, Anne Burlock Lawver, who doesn’t have any tattoos, became fascinated by the process of people getting them. 

So, in 2013, she decided to embed herself in a tiny tattoo parlor in Washington Heights called Gunmetal Tattoos, which has since closed, and with the permission of her subjects started snapping pictures of them having ink done.

“The beauty I saw and tried to convey through my work was both the physical beauty and emotional beauty of the individuals during their private experience.

“No other situation that I’ve photographed has given me such an experience, such a thrill. I returned to the shop again and again anticipating my work taking me into ‘the groove’, that deep level of concentration and involvement in the moment when nothing outside one’s attention exists,” Lawver told the website Slate.

 

The result is a beautiful but harrowing collection of photographs that Lawver appropriately titled‘Indelible’.