When I grew up and attended the first parties there was just one rule: Who falls asleep first will get tagged with a marker pen. There was no exception about it and despite my resilience to being tagged on there were a couple of occasions, where I had to explain to my mother the next day, why I had obscure markings on my body. As I grew older and as my stomach grew stronger I didn’t get tagged anymore, but had myself deliberately painted on by guys. Whether it was, because I fancied the guy, or because I wanted to be cool is still unclear to me.

So getting marker tattoos has a history that is most likely not unique to my live-experience. Still, we probably all noticed the unusual amount of marker-adorned body parts in the last year or so. Take fall 2009 in Brussels, or this year at Rock am Ring. What was unusual about those adorned bodies, was the subject matter: the penis.

I dare say that it all started with The Dogs of Shame last year. The Dogs, Wayne Horse and Abner Preis, decided to organize a life tattooing event, where unaware, but curious, spectators could have penises drawn on their body.

As Wayne explains: “The penis is easy to draw. With a little practice it’s just a matter of seconds. As you can see in the pictures there is an unlimited amount of forms and shapes a penis can be painted in, which makes it interesting every time.
When we first started the penis-tattoo sessions we were wondering, why people would wait in line to get a penis drawn on themselves. Everybody likes to be touched, but in the end that question got never answered. When the next guy in the cue asked for a tribal instead of a penis, it was only natural for us to draw what he hadn’t asked for. The guy then laughed and walked away. But when the tattoo was washed off, they still came back for more. That’s how people are.
It would have been possible to draw a vagina instead of a penis and we even offered it at the Rock am Ring festival. Few people got one and it seems that the inhibition threshold is a lot higher compared to a drawing of a penis.”

Nowadays The Dogs of Shame focus primarily on their music and film career. Certainly something to look forward to, but take a look at these photos first and let them burn onto your retina, because that is what they’ll do.