BE VANIAN

No matter who you are or where you’re from, every tattooed person has been asked the same question—“You know those tattoos are permanent, right?” Chances are that this query has never once been met by anything other than an eye-roll and sigh of exasperation, but there is some merit in going a little deeper on the idea of tattoos and permanence.

- DEVON PRESTON

A tattoo is more difficult to get rid of than a bad haircut or even a poorly thought-out piercing, but as collector Bee Vanian would put it, tattoos are part of an ongoing and changing life story.

“I don’t regret having my face tattoos at all, for me this is a journey,” Vanian says. “I got to experience life with my face being tattooed and now I’m in the process of removing them because I’m on a different path in my life. I’m going through a metamorphosis and although these tattoos bring me joy, sometimes they make me think about really hard times when I wasn’t a very happy person and I don’t feel that way anymore.”

Vanian’s tattoo journey began at 21 and almost immediately after getting their first piece, they started gravitating toward large-scale designs featuring heavy blackwork. This decision was not only informed by their love of the style, but as a means of gaining back autonomy over their own body.