Before there was social media, there were blogs. But before those, there was the very oldest form of self-publishing – older even than blogs – and it was tattoos. If you think about it, tattoos are really just status updates – or blogs – that you write on your skin and then can never really delete.
The Dr Lakra Instagram feed, the work of the Mexican artist and tattooist Jerónimo López Ramírez, is a repository for images of some really, really old ink-jobs, ones that easily predate your dad’s “I <3 Sharon” back piece. Full of arcane symbolism and tribal lore, the art often reminds us of what you might find etched onto Russian nesting dolls.
His own art has been described as “documenting his fascination with the taboos, fetishes, myths and rituals of different cultures” and it feels like there’s a real transgressive, anthropological edge to what’s on show here, as subjects pose proudly for portraits clad in insignia it seems only they, or maybe a tiny cabal of people, can understand and decode.
We picked out some of the choicest cuts: