This buzzing is incessant. The sound of metal piercing flesh and vibrating bone. The air in the room is frigid, still, and antiseptic—the walls blinding as they reflect fluorescent light off of stark white paint. The chaotic drone starts and stops, starts and stops. It’s enough to induce insanity, and a dentist’s drill in the gums would be more welcome. An artist, fiercely focused, needles delicate lines into a fleshy canvas, painting a permanent picture that will last until the skin it covers has rotted away.

In the small city of Concord, California, a girl gets her right hip adorned with stars—tattooed blue outlines onto her pale skin. At 1770 Willow Pass Road, Rigid Tattoo’s premier artist, Dustin C. Burt—known by friends and clients as “D”—concentrates on his work, not distracted by the smooth feminine lines of his client’s body.

“It’s absolutely about the art,” says Burt. “I stay focused on the tattoo. I have a job to do. But to be honest with you, I’d rather deal with a hot chick than some fat stinky biker. I am a man, you know?”

The tradition of tattooing dawned nearly five-thousand years ago, some speculate by accident—it is suspected that an early human got a wound and attempted to clean it with ashes, discovering that the result was a permanent stain. As intentional tattooing was integrated into different civilizations, it became used as a device of healing, magic, blessing, anointment, and eventually societal status. The word itself is allegedly derived from two cultures: the Polynesian word ta, meaning “to strike,” and the Tahitian word tatau, meaning “to mark.”

Craig Lancaster stands in the torrid winter air in the parking lot of Rigid, sucking on a cigarette and stamping his feet to keep warm. He scratches absently at his ribs, where an artist’s most recent work has been engraved. He is momentarily forgetting that new tattoos—while irritatingly itchy—can be damaged if rubbed while healing. After moonlighting as D’s apprentice for the last year, Lancaster is finally allowed to start building his own clientele and will soon be able to quit his job as a stocking manager at Safeway. The first piece he did on a human, he did on himself—inking out a skull on the skin just above his left knee.

“It felt like a whole new world of art opened up,” he says, although the experience was unnerving. “Thinking that you are going to do this to someone else is scary. I could barely keep my hands straight—it was like I was having a seizure and trying to tattoo at the same time. But it was awesome, and you get a rush out of it.”

In many cultures, the art and tradition of tattoo is carried on from parent to child. In addition to being a tangible metaphor for personal choices or tributes, the tattoo is now a means of expression and style, and in general carries less overall cultural or religious meaning. Artists can choose apprentices based on skill and interest, rather than bloodline and obligation. The tattoo subculture flourished and reached the mainstream community as yet another adornment to individual personalities—particularly in cities like San Francisco.
Skin art was introduced to the United States via the armed forces, when soldiers spending time in far corners of the world immersed themselves in foreign cultures.

As early as 1846, New York made the tattoo a permanent fixture in the U.S. by taking advantage of this new trend—tattooing military servicemen. This style of skin art was done primarily with blue, red, yellow and black ink, and was developed as a “quick” method of tattooing to accommodate bustling shops in the 1940s and ‘50s. Traditional black and gray work came out of early prisons and was done in only these colors because of inmate’s limited access to different inks.

Modern tattoos fall under a number of categories, bred from these early styles: neo-traditional, wherein traditional colors are electrified with bright inks; “old-school,” which follows early American styles; biomechanical, wherein machinelike elements are coupled with natural components; fine-line, tribal, photo-realistic, and many others.

The tattoo is not for everyone—certain religions forbid them, and negative social stigmas influence a large portion of society. But for serious and dedicated enthusiasts, the tattoo is a rite of passage, a powerful form of expression, and a tribute to thousands of years of trials and traditions.