Hometown Road Trip with Three ‘Brutal’ Tattoo Artists

Photographer Rei Delos-Reyes documents a road trip with three tattoo artists and friends. Jonah Slater, Ronan Mal and James Goh travel together through London, Dublin and Glasgow in a photo series called Markings, revisiting places that inspired their work.

The artists pack their equipment into a car and start from Slater’s East London studio, Church of England. They drive via ferry to Dublin, unload beds, equipment and supplies into an empty city centre studio, tattoo clients for three days, then head into the Irish countryside before crossing back to reach Goh’s Glasgow studio.

Each artist approaches their work differently. Mal draws from the places they visit, Slater focuses on custom pieces and larger sessions, and Goh joins in on the tattooing. “There were a couple of clients who got tattooed by all three of us along the way, which was cool,” says Slater. “And it was the first time I think the three of us had actually spent that much time tattooing simultaneously.”

The artists share a fascination with Gothic architecture, religious imagery and darker historical references. “We all identify quite strongly with where we’re from, and you can see those influences bleeding into our work,” explains Slater. “I think there’s a shared language between us,” Slater says. “Similar interests, similar references, similar ideas, but we speak that language very differently.”

At Glasgow’s Necropolis, a Victorian cemetery overlooking the city, Mal’s Celtic motifs and religious imagery find a natural setting. “Ronan’s work uses a lot of Celtic motifs such as crosses and religious imagery, so he would have been like a kid in a candy shop in the necropolis,” jokes Goh. “All three of us can look at the same thing and take something from it, but what comes out the other end looks completely different,” adds Slater.

In Dublin, Mal returns to early tattooing encounters, recalling finding old tattoo magazines and books at car boot sales and passing Shamrock Tattoo on Crow Street to look at the flash in the window. “So many aspects of modern life pull us away from that, and I think everyone is noticing the profound loss that is coming with it. Tattooing is no different.”

Further out in Wexford, they visit Mal’s friend and fellow tattooer Ste Murdoch and his wife Molly Mahoney, who live with their family and horses in the Irish countryside. Murdoch tattoos from a trailer beside the stables, a “proper little tattoo studio inside”, its walls filled with flash and equipment. “There was something incredibly grounded about what Ste and Molly have built,” says Slater. “It felt like tattooing for the sake of tattooing: giving people good tattoos, looking after people and being part of a community.”

The friends had worked alongside each other before, but never this closely or for this long. “They work extremely hard, and being around them every day and seeing how they approach work was a masterclass on how to get stuff done,” says Goh. “It’s usually the sweetest people making the most brutal work.”