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On Thursday, September 19, 1991, high in the Austrian Alps, two German hikers discovered the mummified remains of a man lying face-down
in a pool of glacial meltwater.
It was one of the 20th century’s most extraordinary archaeological discoveries. Ötzi the Iceman, as he came to be known, lived more than 5,000 years ago. Before Judaism, before Stonehenge, before Cheops was entombed in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Unaltered by burial rites or rituals, the Iceman is an impeccably preserved specimen of European
Stone Age life.
Perhaps most intriguing is that Ötzi – who, it can reasonably be assumed, was neither an outlaw biker nor a carnie – was tattooed. More than 50 times.
Far from a mark of fringe cultures, tattooing has a long and, for the most part, noble history, from the knights of the Crusades to the Plains Indians of North America to the legendary Japanese master Yoshitsugu Muramatsu. Tattoos were even thought to provide a measure of pain relief: remarkably, those on Ötzi correspond with known acupuncture lines.
During the 19th century, tattooing – exotic, time-consuming, and therefore expensive – became somewhat fashionable among the European upper crust. (Even Winston Churchill’s mother is said to have had one of a snake encircling her wrist.) With the invention of the rst electric tattoo gun in 1891, the practice was brought to the masses. Now anyone could get one, and for the next several decades tattooing became associated with a certain rebelliousness, if not an outright criminal element. In the 1920s, in fact, it was so rare for reputable and upright citizens to be inked that a person with a full-body tattoo could earn $200 a week in the circus – a six- gure annual salary in 2009 dollars. But, like anything else, tattooing falls in and out of favor. And back in: today, it’s estimated that 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 26 and 40 have at least one tattoo somewhere on their bodies.
But is it art?
Depends on who you ask. Kristi Kilbourne, 50, tattooist and owner of Spokane’s Lady Luck Tattoo Studio, prefers to qualify her answer. “It’s like advertising,” she explains. “You have to be creative to be really good, but grounded enough to be able to produce the same damn nautical stars and the same baby footprints – and not go nuts in the process.”
PROOF! is a free publication distributed twice a year by Johnston Printing in an e ort to bring to light the contributions of area artists. To receive additional copies by mail, or to share comments or a story that you’d like to see in PROOF!, visit proof.johnstonprinting.com. Founded in Spokane in 1947, Johnston Printing is
a family-owned, full-service shop o ering both o set and digital printing, along with binding and mailing services, for every marketing, promotional, and advertising need.
Kristi Kilbourne, photographed around the time she was voted Best Tattooed Female in America by the National Tattoo Association.
cover and facing page photographs by Jennifer Raudebaugh
photograph courtesy of Kristi Kilbourne