Photographer shops out ex-gang members tattoos, resutls bring them to tears
Oct 29, 2016
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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Photographer Steven Burton started an ambitious project, photoshopping out the tattoos from 27 ex-gang members. He did this to understand the effects tattoos have on people escaping the gangs, how they are judged by society and ultimately how they judge themselves.
While the photoshop aspects of removing tattoos are quite fascinating (over two years and 400 photoshop hours), it’s the affect that the shopped photos had that caught my eyes.
Skin deep started the project after watching G-dog, a movie about Homeboy Industries and father Greg Doyle. Homebody helps former gang-members to return to their communities.
Most of those ex-gang members have been tattooed practically forever, and have not seen their naked skin in decades, so the effect of their retouched portraits were incredibly strong. Steven tells people that:
One of the more heavily tattooed people, Marcus, started laughing because he just didn’t know what to say. He was sort of shocked by the image. The laughter was followed by a heavy silence, then his eyes teared up. It was then that I realized how deep this story could be
Steven then showed the retouched portraits to the models, and their reaction is as emotional as it can get:
Steven is now bringing a book together to tell the stories of those ex-gang members on Kickstarter. The idea is the tell the stories of the individual people whom Steven worked with in a visual way. One of the rewards is alanticula print which morphs between the initial portrait and the photoshopped one. It is quite impactful.
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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15 responses to “Photographer shops out ex-gang members tattoos, resutls bring them to tears”
Wow, that’s really top-class image manipulation. Without the text, I couldn’t tell which is the original. Bravo.
“Hotographer” photograph the door… Hotor…
Spell checker.. have you heard of it?
Graeme. I know you are neither a gang member, have these kind of tattoos, or regret yours in any way, but thought this was interesting. ..
Very interesting yeah, because when you’ve got them you sort of don’t see them. They without doubt alter the preconceptions people have.
Yeah, that’s what I kind of thought too – they just become part of who you are. Results after photoshop are quite shocking though, it’s almost like a skin they hide behind that defines them, and without, there just normal looking chaps…
I bet they had a private thought to themselves afterwards. I agree with you their camouflage makes them stand out!
I won’t read the article until the editor knows how to spell properly.
That’s insanely good shopping haha
**RESULTS In the headline? Really?
Is that the most you’ve seen here?
that haircut? really?
Anyone notice the link is “hotographer”?
interested to see the rap sheet of these guys….
and why the hell would anyone want these tattoos in the first place?
i mean are they forced to get those stupid face tattoos?
and who is forcing them? the idiots who got them before and now don´t want to suffer alone?
are they tattooed as prank when they are passed out on drugs?
interesting commentary on latin identity and apparent proximity to whiteness… these photos say a lot