Tattoos can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, China, Greece and Persia. In its earlier forms, they have been ways to indicate criminals, as a means of communication between spies, and prisoners. As tattooing supplies became mroe accesible, upper class citizens began to turn away from the art greatly decreasing its coverage and study. Tattoing didn’t really pick up again until the early 1900s when Samuel O’Riely moved to Chatham Square to tattoo working class citizens and became a way for many people, especially military officers, to depict their travels. However, tattoos have particularly grown in the past 30 years due to a renaissance in artwork and increase in media representation from magazines, TV shows and pinterest. In recent years, we have seen the rise in invisible tattoos, white tattoos, geometric and minimalism trends, programmable tattoo machines and temporary tattoos. Temporary tattoos have really been on the rise for millennials as new ways to make them longer lasting have been created; these temporary tattoos have also met millennial needs of being tattoo free in the work place, the desire to avoid the pain of tattoos, the regrets of their permanency and to change them with trends.
