In the fall of 1982, Sandi Fellman, a young American photographer visiting Japan, began the series of color portraits in this striking volume. Her subjects were the Irezumi, a secretive group of people drawn from the underworld of Tokyo and Osaka. To meet these men and women who had chosen to have themselves transformed through tattooing into living works of art was difficult; to gain their trust and to persuade them to bare themselves for an American woman and a huge Polaroid camera was an essay in cultural contradiction. But Sandi Fellmans unstinting effort has produced an extraordinary collection of photographs, which at once document a cultural phenomenon virtually unknown in the West (and in Japan as well) and reveal a tradition of artistry and dedication that knows no national boundaries.
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