Bernard Clark: Tattoo Portraits

Jan Allen

Agnes Etherington Art Centre
36 pp 25 col. ill. 9 x 9 in softcover 
978-1-55339-261-3 
$14.00 Can. $17.00 U.S. (12 €)
January 2012

bernardclark.gifspacerDrawing on Bernard Clark’s success as a documentary photographer of ink culture, this publication features his composite portraits of tattooed individuals in landscape and architectural settings. In the eighteen recent works featured, Clark has digitally inserted his extraordinary subjects into surroundings that highlight the stridency of their self-definition through markings. The main essay points to the ways in which Clark’s sensitive and at times playful displacements highlight the contemporary role of the body as a refuge of stable identity and personal expression. In tandem with his award-winning work as a commercial photographer, Bernard Clark has cultivated an art practice focusing on social subcultures. Over the past decade, he has traveled widely in an exceptional project documenting skin art contributing to this surging global phenomenon. His work has been featured in magazines such as Skin & Ink and in his 2002 book with Bob Baxter, Tattoo Road Trip: Two Weeks in Samoa.










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