- Title: SWITZERLAND: Tattoo legend Hoffmann has ink in his veins
- Date: 22nd March 2010
- Summary: HEIDEN, SWITZERLAND (MARCH 19, 2010) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF TATTOO ARTIST HERBERT HOFFMANN'S HOUSE HOFFMANN AND REPORTER ON BALCONY MOUNTAIN PANORAMA HOFFMANN AND REPORTER TALKING ON BALCONY VARIOUS OF HOFFMANN SHOWING OFF HIS TATTOOS (SOUNDBITE) (German) TATTOO ARTIST HERBERT HOFFMANN, SAYING: "I am convinced that in the course of thousands of years of evolution it was ingrained into the genetic make-up and that we get it from our forefathers as a hereditary disposition, so to speak. Whoever gets this disposition just cannot help it. Those who don't have it, will never understand how people can get tattooed, they see it all differently, Spending money on a tattoo, enduring pain and being disfigured in the process- they don't understand it." TATTOO ON HOFFMANN'S HAND VARIOUS OF HOFFMANN SHOWING OFF HIS TATTOOS (SOUNDBITE) (German) TATTOO ARTIST HERBERT HOFFMANN, SAYING: "Whenever I saw people who had tattoos I spoke to them, no matter if it was on the streets, in waiting areas, in trains or buses or where ever. Some I even followed home, just to get to talk to them. And they recognized my enthusiasm for tattoos and they invited me to visit them, and I also invited them to my place and then I asked them to allow me to take pictures of their tattoos."
- Embargoed: 6th April 2010 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Switzerland
- Country: Switzerland
- Topics: Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVAEJWSFBUD1QJPS2KJNYYRKSVGS
- Story Text: Tattoo legend Herbert Hoffmann may be ninety years old, but his heart still pumps strongly with ink in his veins.
At 90 years of age, his body may show the signs of time, but Herbert Hoffmann's spirit and passion are far from withered. He is considered the world's oldest tattoo artist and he wears the stoty of his life on his skin.
Born in 1919, Hoffmann discovered his fascination with the ink art at the age of nine, when he saw a colleague of an uncle who sported tattoos on his arms. In 1946, when Hoffmann was a prisoner of war in Russia, he met an old man whose body was covered in tattoos but one caught Hoffmann's attention: a cross, a heart and an anchor, all of them intertwined. Faith, love and hope, the meaning of this specific tattoo, was to stick with Hoffmann all his life.
Hoffmann believes that "getting ink" is heredetary and that once you start, you simply cannot stop: "I am convinced that in the course of thousands of years of evolution it was ingrained into the genetic make-up and that we get it from our forefathers as a hereditary disposition, so to speak," Hoffmann said. "Whoever gets this disposition just cannot help it. Those who don't have it, will never understand how people can get tattooed, they see it all differently: Spending money on a tattoo, enduring pain and being disfigured in the process- they don't understand it."
Since the 1950s Hoffmann has constantly searched for people with tattoos. He was watching out for the tell tale signs, a shade of blue underneath a shirt collar, a coloured line obscured by a sleeve. With his Rolleiflex camera, Hoffmann took pictures of the men and women who had the same passion he did, although back in the fifties and sixties, tattoos were considered to be the markings of the poor, prison inmates and outcasts. "Whenever I saw people who had tattoos I spoke to them, no matter if it was on the streets, in waiting areas, in trains or buses or where ever. Some I even followed home, just to get to talk to them. And they recognized my enthusiasm for tattoos and they invited me to visit them, and I also invited them to my place and then I asked them to allow me to take pictures of their tattoos."
Hoffmann claims he has tattooed more than 40,000 people in his time and he has also shot hundreds of photographs of the tattoos of his customers or people he has met. The renowned Galery Brothers Lehmann in Berlin has just opened an exhibition displaying Hoffmann's photographs, spanning the 1950s to the 1970s when tattoos were still widely stigmatized as skin art of the anti-social. There is some dissent surrounding the exhibition as Hoffmann claims that he had given many of his negatives to a photo-lab in Hamburg who proceeded to 'take him to the cleaners', as Hoffmann puts it. "They (the photo lab in Hamburg) produce the pictures and deliver them to the Gallery Lehmann, among others. Gallery Lehmann is very renowned and, in my impression, very solvent. Now those pictures are being produced without me, I cannot even access my work I own the copyright for, and I don't get a cent of the money the photo lab and the Gallery Lehmann make."
Frank Lehmann, owner of the gallery, is full of praise for Hoffmann's work: "For Herbert Hoffmann tattooing is not just an attitude towards life, it's a life's purpose," Lehmann told Reuters. "He always says that he has respect for people who are not tattooed, but life happens elsewhere. He is interested in the history. How has tattooing changed, how has society' attitude changed. In the 30s and 40s many tattooists ended up in concentration camps and were persecuted and this is an important for him." Hoffmann's photographs are not voyeuristic, they meet the lense's subject at eye level. They are pictures of young people and old people, fat and thin, tall or short, men and women, all connected by their love for tattoos and the pride in their eyes for wearing them as and where they do. "The thing that I find so fascinating is that there really are only these photos from Herbert Hoffmann. He never saw himself as an artist he wanted to make a documentation and that makes this work unique," says Lehmann.
Despite his age, Hoffmann is not slowing down. He constantly receives visitors at his home in Swiss Heiden, where he moved almost 30 years ago. He travels to conventions and talks to journalists about the pictures on his whole body that also tell the story of his life, a life that represents almost a century of tattoo history. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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