Portrait of a piercer

Marios is a 32-year-old former chef who with the exception of a two-year sojourn cooking in Utrecht has lived in Volos all his life. Four years ago he did what so many people want to do with their lives and turned his passion into his business, and now shares a small shop with a tattoo artist just around the corner from my apartment. Catering to everyone from teenage rebels to the more respectable (and discreet) members of Greek society, the heavily tattooed Marios earns a living poking holes in people, which he told me he considers to be first and foremost an art form. I’d chosen Marios as the subject for my straightforward portrait, but it was difficult to not venture into photographic territory that included both the place where he worked and the tools of his trade. Shooting what was effectively two rolls of colour 36-exposure film on my dSLR, I took a torch and a strong light bulb just in case but ended up using only available light to take photographs of Marios in a few different settings including inside his shop and against a nearby metal fence that was screaming out to be used as a backdrop (as well as the obvious accoutrements of his trade, Marios appears to me to have a certain metallic quality that I believed the fence would help show). Getting to his shop early, I found Marios doing his daily chores involving mopping the floors and feeding the shop’s pet iguana. It seemed logical to grab a few shots of both of these as well. One of two of them turned out quite nicely I believe. Despite Marios’ basic English skills it was reasonably easy to work with him, the major problems being my own reservations as directing him too much. Having said that, I found myself moving him around more than I imagined, and again I think the effort was worth it. The pictures I took were taken on three separate occasions, first a couple of simple test shots to look at and think about before I went and did the proper shoot, then the proper shoot itself, which was broken in two by a gap of an hour while we waited for his business partner to turn up with the shop’s one and only head torch, which I thought would make an interesting accessory and which the tattoo artist forgot to bring. In total, the entire shoot took about 20 minutes. I must say I’m rather pleased with what’s in effect my first ever portrait session and am very much looking forward to having Paul tear me another new arsehole.