Indonesian tattooists revive tribal customs

Hold still: A tattoo artist using the traditional ‘hand-tapping’ method during the tattoo festival at Maguwoharjo in Yogyakarta, Java’s cultural heartland. — AFP

MAGUWOHARJO: Men in tribal dress stand amid dense jungle on the Indonesian island of Java, their bodies covered in elaborate, traditional tattoos inspired by cultures in distant corners of the vast, tropical archipelago.

Many images on display at the recent tattoo festival that brought the men together were not applied with fast, modern machines, but using a centuries-old, tribal method that involves artists gently tapping a stick mounted with a needle on a subject’s skin.