Ella
This set of images discusses the relationship my friend Ella has with her childhood home, San Francisco, California, and her current life in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she moved to at 18 to study Graphic Design. Since her time in Edinburgh, she has had four tattoos, two of which are dedicated to both her hometown and her heritage. I wrote a poem to try to convey the tattoos and what they represent to her - to explore how a dot of ink can mean so much more than just a few numbers or a simple phrase.
It seems like a common ‘want’ in life to have tattoos,
Whether that be one
or one hundred.
Some mean nothing,
Others mean more.
Others are your Mother’s last name.
A piece of her to you
and you to her,
Forever stained on the skin like a declaration in time.
Others are your home.
Your appreciation, your nostalgia, your very essence of being.
They are your personality in a place, your secrets in a number.
Your heritage, your family, your stitches in the wounds of memory.
Decrypted surnames,
Home and away,
Others are Everything.
Those dots of ink may look like nothing,
but nothing is a word with much more meaning to those who speak its language.