This picture disturbs me, his gaze his way to keep up. His expression conveys so many things which makes the picture even more beautiful to see
it’s a she.
haha it’s obviously a woman
Oh god really? SHE, is Apo Whang Od, a respected elder in the Philippines and a Kalinga. She is the last living Kalinga mambabatok, or tattoo artist, who dedicated her entire life in preserving the Kalinga’s tattooing traditions and continues today by giving tattoo’s as well as teaching the new generation so that the Kalinga tattooing traditions won’t die with her.
She has taught those who have studied and continue to study all of our tattooing traditions in the Philippines from the Cordillera to the Visayas to Mindanao, to what is now known as our modern traditional Filipino tattooing culture which is a revival of all our traditional tattooing practices. It is a combination of all the practices, motifs, techniques, into a modern traditional and spiritual tattooing culture and a revival of them that was almost practically wiped out except from the remaining ethnic groups who resisted colonization during the Spanish colonial Era then the U.S.
P.S. As someone who has been studying our tattooing traditions, motifs, and learning how to be a traditional tattoo artist I can name all the meanings of her tattoo motifs just by looking at them. So before anyone, thinks on getting some tattoo’s from this or any other Filipino tattoo motif, know that they all have meaning, if you don’t know what they mean and don’t deserve them, especially when you get it done by an artist who doesn’t know shit, you better know that you will be appropriating and will be called out on your shit. Because I have seen it once when a white guy got motifs he didn’t deserve and got it from seeing pictures of Apo Whang Od and other Filipino’s who have gotten traditional tattoo’s, creating them onto his own fucked up design, and going someplace where they did it for him.
