Love letters written in ink

A photography & interview series capturing the stories, experiences, people and places that have left their mark - both internally and externally.

“My tattoo is blossom…and it’s essentially about…blossoming; about self love, acceptance and coming out. I got it when I was very sure I wanted to be with a woman, which was a very slow burning process, taking me over 2 years to accept. It took me a long time to understand, that it should be something I celebrate in myself; I’ve always celebrated it in other people, but understanding it in other people is very different to understanding it in yourself. There was nothing other than myself stopping me from realising my sexuality - I’ve been so fortunate in that I’ve just been allowed to let it happen, to let it grow. But there’s a moment where you realise that it’s totally not just a phase, and getting something so permanent as a tattoo symbolised to me that this place that I’m in with my sexuality is also permanent. This is where I’m at, and this is me.”

BRYONY

“I chose the barbed wire, because I was in so much pain emotionally. Love has always been a drama for me - very intense. Whenever I find myself in a relationship, I always notice extreme behaviour on my behalf - I guess the tattoo was a manifestation of that. I thought, by getting this tattoo, I was finding a conclusion for that relationship. He marked me in many, many ways. So, there was a need for me to see it, to visualise it on my body.”

YUMA

“I’d really hit a peak of bad mental health. I was in a pattern of toxic thoughts and behaviours which didn’t fit who I knew I was and what I stood for - in terms of seeing the beauty and valuing the imperfections within myself and other people. 

Then, in my second year of uni, I bought a puzzle of Guatemalan face-masks from a charity shop. Whenever anybody came round to our place, I would ask them to add to it. It took the entire year to complete; and even then, there were still pieces missing. But this puzzle really taught me about how developing ourselves is about collecting these pieces; we are never complete or incomplete, we are always on a spectrum. The puzzle pieces on my body remind me that I’m constantly adding to myself.”

JENNA-ANNE

“I was in a really dark place, in a relationship that wasn’t working. Through no fault of my partner’s — it was my own — I had very little sense of self worth and was stuck in this real God complex. I put him on a pedestal; I didn’t think I was good enough. 

When I fall in love with someone, I fall hard and I do everything for them; but I never do it for myself. We broke up, and I was like ‘I’m going to use this time to really fall in love with myself again’. 

I was reading Call Me By Your Name at the time, and I discovered this quote ‘…find Cupid everywhere in Rome because we’d clipped one of his wings and he was forced to fly in circles’.

So I’ve got Cupid on my left ribcage, and the arrow points directly to my heart. I mean, Ru Paul says it: If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you going to love somebody else? and having this tattoo on me is a constant reminder of that.”

MARK

“I ran away to Barcelona for a year, wanting to find a sense of freedom. There I became a sort-of ‘free-love flower child’, spending the year being naked and free. It was a complete change to what I’d been doing previously in my life - conforming to dance school expectations, following rules to try to get to something. I had an awakening, a realisation that I’m more than just a machine or a number. There I discovered what it is to just live, to not have to force myself to be anything. The expectations and rules just fell away when I moved to Barcelona; it turned me in a very different direction. I guess it’s a love letter to Barcelona…or maybe Barcelona’s love letter to me.”

IMOGEN

“I had decided that I wanted all of my actions to be done from a place of love and compassion. School had been difficult with bullying, but I knew I couldn’t respond to hate with more hate - I need to forgive people. It’s a philosophy that’s stuck with me - not a romantic love, or a self-love, but a universal one.

I was fourteen when I got this tattoo. I’d read that the skin on your gum renews and grows a new layer every six months, so that if you get a tattoo there, it can almost completely disappear within that space of time. Now it’s almost a decade later, and it’s still there! It feels like the love is remaining with me.”

EMILY

“The crab is a symbol of my Mum - she’s a Cancer star sign. And she’s such a Cancer… so delicate and nurturing, but also has a hard shell. The love I have for my Mum is also mixed in with a bit of forgiveness - which she doesn’t know about. She never learned to love her own body, so there were some unhealed things within her, which were then passed onto me. I’ve now started a journey of unpicking those things, trying to develop a healthy self-perception and mindset, having peace and clarity within myself. Due to her fragility, this will be something that we never actually address. So I guess this tattoo is me making peace with that. It really is a visual, unwritten love letter to my mum, a reminder to have patience and compassion for how she is.”

JENNA-ANNE

“This is a cactus - not a middle finger. I got this done by my ex, who was actually my ex at the time. We’d broken up a few months before, but at the time I was still smitten, and was trying to get him back. This was the first time I’d seen him since, and I thought that it would be great, that we’d just have some make up sex or something, but he was like ‘No. We Can’t. 

So we didn’t - I just got a shitty tattoo instead. We were lying there watching Netflix, whilst I was getting stabbed with this needle, and he was really bad at it so it hurt SO much. But, I guess it is nice, because even though we’ve broken up, it does remind me that there were good times, and he was the first person I ever properly loved. He managed to leave his mark… with a middle finger.”

JESS

“I read this book — it’s my favourite book — called ‘Son Of Achilles’. It’s a love story between two men which really resonated with me. 

I’m used to reading a gay book and the relationship in it being really sexualised and smutty, but in this story the love that they had was so incredibly passionate. They were best friends, lovers, and one was the other’s council, but there were also really messy parts where they did things wrong and upset one another. 

Reading this book spurred on my last breakup. The relationship I was in at the time felt stagnant, and I sat there and thought ‘I don’t have that, but I want that’. This book opened by eyes to a relationship I didn’t know I could have.”

MARK

“I got this tattoo of NoFace - my favourite character from my favourite film Spirited Away - a month or two after I got diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). He’s seen as a villain character initially, but it’s only because he’s plagued by his own urges to impress and please and mimic the people around him, which is quite similar to BPD.

It took quite a while for me to come around to the idea of having BPD, I felt it made me into someone that no-one would want to be around, like NoFace. But NoFace is dope - you just need to get to know him.

His character helped me learn to love my BPD; I realised it’s part of me, but doesn’t define me, that people can see and nurture the other good parts of me too. And If I can love him, I can love myself.

I’d always felt an affinity to NoFace without even knowing why; but when I got diagnosed with BPD, it felt like “oh, that makes sense. He makes sense. I make sense.”

TALIA

“I never thought I’d be someone who experiences home sickness, but I do believe that distance makes the heart grow fonder. So when I moved away from home for the first time, I did miss the place where I’d spent the entirety of my life before. I wanted to get a tattoo specific to the place that I grew up, like the deer I would see in Richmond Park on the drive to school every day. The deer is a reminder of my love of home, and I felt I would never feel homesick with it on me.”

PHOEBE

“Every summer, when I was young, we would go on holiday to a place in Mexico called Acapulco.  I remember watching my Mother coming out from the sea one time, with her long, long black hair dripping wet, and from that moment on, I was convinced she was a mermaid. She was in her element  there, always smiling when she was emerging from the waves. 

She died this year on the 21st of March - on the spring equinox. I got this mermaid in her memory, although it doesn’t really look like her- I think her features look slightly more Asian than Mexican - but the long hair is there, the part of her that I will always remember.”

ROBERTO

“When I was very depressed, my little brother drew me this picture to cheer me up. According to him, it symbolises that you have to struggle up the stairs to reach the sunshine and be happy; that you’ll come across different hurdles and difficulties along the way, but eventually you’ll get there and it will be worth it. He drew it aged ten, and for someone so young, it shows such insight into life. I thought his drawing simplifies what a lot of people try to say with a lot more words.

He’s always been really critical of himself. I wanted him to know that I was so proud of his drawing, that it meant so much that I would get it drawn onto my body. We’re both not very good with words, so this is my way of expressing my love for him. It’s a mutual love letter between us.”

TILLY

“Every time I used to leave my Grandma’s house, she would wave me off from her doorstep, wearing an iconic, full royal-blue tracksuit. The colour blue was a theme for her; in her house there was blue stuff everywhere. She passed away two years ago, and that image of her in her tracksuit , waving on her doorstep, will always be how I think of her.”

JOSH

“Being a young person, I always thought love would just come at some point, but I’ve still never felt love for another person. I thought that maybe something was wrong with me, but have come to realise that love comes in many different channels, and one that I could always focus on is my love for myself. The tattoo is a permanent declaration, a promise to myself, to always have that love for myself. For me, it’s just an absolute confidence that I am enough. Billie Eilish says it in a song lyric, something like: “everybody says you need somebody, but aren’t I somebody?’. You hear these sentiments so many times, but there’s a difference between hearing it, and actually wanting to believe it. People come and go, but ultimately you are the one that is always there for yourself. I call the tattoo ‘Persephony - a grown woman in full bloom’, and it’s a representation of how I feel about myself now, and hopefully will forever.”

PHOEBE

“My Dad’s a really great painter. Our whole house is covered in his artwork. One Christmas, I was flicking through my Dad’s sketchbooks and I stumbled across this drawing. It’s a sketch he did of a sculpture that sat in my nursery in my parents house when I was growing up. I loved the drawing and I loved the connection to home that it represented.

The two figures represent my parents. It’s just the three of us in the family, and I get along really well with them. I feel that, time away from them, since I left home, has made me see them more as individual people, rather than just my parents.”

CLEO

“After my two grandfathers passed away, I wanted a tattoo that symbolised family. I designed this tattoo, inspired by a famous artist from New Zealand called Gordon Walters, who’s worked I’ve always loved. It’s made up of abstract New Zealand symbols: the two dots in the middle are me, my parents are the spine, the dots on each side represent my grandparents, and the spiral symbolises infinity.”

WALLACE

“When I was quite young, a close family friend moved in with us for six months, and ever since then she’s essentially been my sister - she is the best person in the world. She gave birth to twins four years ago, and those kids are the loves of my life. I spent a lot of time with them for the first few years; I had a part in raising them, and they call me their aunty. My sister then decided to move back to South Africa, so I wanted to get a tattoo that made it feel like they’re with me at all times. Because they’re not part of my family biologically or legally, this tattoo is my bind to them. If I’m having a bad day, I just look at the tattoo, and it serves as a reminder of them, which makes me happy.”

AMELIA

“I became obsessed with watching Tracy Emin’s talks about her artwork on Youtube. I found it so inspiring listening to her saying things like: ‘if you don’t believe in your own work, how is anybody else meant to believe in it’. I hadn’t heard anybody say that before. Watching her over and over, her words became this mantra for my life. I have always suffered from real imposter syndrome in my creative projects, but I just started to think ‘fuck it, maybe I’ll just be more like Tracy Emin’. I love her attitude. I love what she embodies and what she stands for. I love the fact that she loves women, and that she believes in female artists.”

LIV

“I was suffering from severe insomnia, and didn’t know how to fix it, but I found real comfort in moments when I would see the moon. I would quite often sit with my curtains open looking at it, when I couldn’t sleep. 

I read a lot about the moon’s meaning in Eastern philosophy, and was so fascinated that I began writing about it and exploring it in my creative work. I started to feel quite at home with it, and was able to turn the hours when I felt incredibly anxious and couldn’t sleep, into a time when I could be creative and productive. I developed an infatuation with the moon, and became almost dependent on it being there.”

LIV

“When I was really little, my Mom and I both used to clean a yoga studio. There was a lady who taught there who was also a ballet teacher, so she used to give me free ballet lessons in return. One time we were there cleaning really late, so whilst my Mom did all the cleaning, I lay down on top of this shoe cubby in the corner and covered my face with these lavender eye masks.”

RYLEE

“The Myrtle branch is a symbol for Aphrodites and Venus. They’re known as the goddesses of love, but they’re also the goddesses of sexuality. I grew up in a place where sexuality, not even in terms of queerness, but just sexuality in general, was not an acceptable thing to own as a woman - so that was the reason that I got it. My friend designed it for me, and I got it on my neck because I love having my neck kissed. So the tattoo was like me owning my sexuality, owning my queerness, owning everything.” 

RYLEE

“I’d been in a long-term relationship with a guy, that really wasn’t working out. I’d never felt settled in that relationship, uncomfortable with the way that our gender roles worked. But towards the end of that relationship, I fell in love with somebody I didn’t expect to - she was my best friend. We found this mutual connection together, but it ended up being really turbulent; it was manipulative and toxic when I look back on it. I think I latched onto this relationship because I didn’t know or understand that side of myself yet. I wanted to explore my sexual and gender identity with someone that I knew really well, and was scared to go out there and say ‘this is who I am’. 

At the same time as dealing with that relationship, I was reading a book called ‘Anam Cara’ - which translates as ‘soul friend’. It’s an Irish Celtic approach: an idea that in each life, you’re born into a group of people that you do your ‘soul work’ with. These people won’t always be people that love you back, but people that challenge you and serve a purpose. 

This girl and I had made a really intense connection, and done a lot of work together in that period of life. She was a ‘soul friend’ - there to direct me into realising and accepting that I am queer, to teach me about my future relationships, rather than be in one with me beyond that."

LIV

“My friend Catherine drew a load of cows for me, just because I really love cows. For reference, I’m wearing a cow print jacket here and my phone case is also cow print. She just drew them for the sake of it, and I loved them so much I wanted to turn one into a tattoo. She got the tattoo for me as a birthday present, and she got one on the same day. It was just a feeling of overwhelming platonic love for her. I felt so grateful to have a friend like that - would would think of me, draw a load of cows, and then get me the tattoo for my birthday. Oh, and I ate my first Chipotle that day. An all-round good day.” 

JESS