Tahiti Tattoos

Tattooed, the Polynesian body becomes a body-sign, a book of spells scrawled on the skin, a proclamation of knowledge and power. These primordial body signatures poetically express the love, truthfulness, fidelity, and other aspects of Tahiti's culture. Now, the striking black and white photos of Gian Paolo Barbieri, one of the world's top fashion photographers, bring home to all of us the fullmeaning of Polynesia's language of the skin.