“Hand in glove We can go wherever we please And everything depends upon How near you stand to me And if the people stare Then the people stare I really don't know and I really don't care” The Smiths

Hand In Glove. Rue Trousseau. 11th District. It's 6pm and the last appointments have left. It's in a quiet shop that i find Romain Pareja, tattooist in his profession and master of the establishment. After a few minutes of smoke break in which we mangle the interview, since the man is articulate, we go down into a big arched basement. A cosy and welcoming area where 3 tattoo posts are lined up. We sit down on stools.

HAND IN GLOVE... In 2011, Romain just became the father of twins and after a few years working in a shop, a friend of his bought a place in his favorite road and suggested that he setup his activity there straight away. The premises are perfect for a tattoo shop… This opportunity gives birth to Hand in Glove. The name : after initially thinking of “In my Eye” in reference to a famous song from American Hardcore band Minor Threat : reminder of the addiction that is sometimes common to tattooing but it didn’t sound right. He finally chooses an equally famous song from The Smiths in which the lyrics sound closely linked with the state of mind he wants his shop to be in: respect, open minded and tolerance, without mentioning the bad boy poses according to the vision he has of tattooing : “if the people stare (…) I really don’t care.”

They start out as a team of three confirmed tattooists (Cokney and Hugo). His work ethics push him to choose an artist “not necessarily because the dude is well known but because he works properly and humanly, there’s an understanding”. He continues : “The shop isn’t really big, when you’re tattooing, you spend a lot of time in the shop with the same people in a small area; it has to work”. 6 years later two artists of the original team still work at Hand in Glove. On another note, Romain searches stability and for that reason he no longer teaches like he used to when he opened the shop : “I believe there’s too many tattooists. Too many are out of control and don’t work properly as well. It has an impact on the tattoo shops and there isn’t a real demand every time. I don’t wish to teach someone so he can bugger off afterwards. I’ll teach a tattoo artist with a real drawing talent so we can work together but taking an apprentice if there’s no work for him later, then it’s a waste of time.”

His conception of tattooing pushes him to keep a clear eye on the development of this practice: “There are many talented tattoo artists, it has really become popular. Some are really good and some very bad. And beyond that, some are fashion tattooists: they only do what is a trend and that’s all they know. But this approach only works for a time because a tattoo shop doesn’t work that way… Some people have different demands, you have to know how to satisfy this demand and the only way is to have solid drawing basics nailed that will allow you to draw a bit of everything. Tattooing isn’t just colour, or black, or tribal or Japanese, it’s the whole thing. It’s important to have a wide panel. No matter which style you’ll get into, you’ll be able to use everything and you won’t be slowed down.”

...AND ELSEWHERE To the question « Going anywhere else ? », Romain replies that he must regularly work at the shop because it’s his passion but also a business that must run smoothly with costs, appointments, etc. The shop allows him to work with his landmarks and is easier to balance with his family life and other passions. “I travel less so I can tattoo but when I do move around, I don’t necessarily wish to tattoo. Also, when I go abroad, to other tattooist places, I’d rather spend time with them outside of tattooing.” He’s stopped running off to conventions, where he used to enjoy meeting other tattooists some of which became friends. By the way, the shop regularly invites friends or friends of friends who are passing by. Guest weeks happen by affinity, also because Romain thinks it’s important to improve and share with people who have another vision of this ancient practice, another culture, who live in other countries with a different approach to the customer or a different workflow at the shop.

Do you have the feeling there exists a movement with tattooing in France Or globally ? “There’s more and more different styles of tattoos, some do traditional Japanese, others will have a more comic side, others will mainly do black pieces or simpler stuff, there’s old school, new school, tribal and within each of those styles some will approach things very differently. But those things haven’t really changed since the beginning a part from the more graphic styles or minimalist. We can see more and more of that. I also think that tattooing isn’t like painting or drawing on paper. Some tattoos are made outside of codes but it doesn’t mean it necessarily “works” as a tattoo. With Tattoos, you can do everything, but does everything work well ? There are certain codes : regarding the technic, the imagery, the placement, the movement, the tattoo has to endure time. Some things might seem cool, and maybe have never even been done before but sometimes that’s for a reason: the body isn’t right for it. It’s maybe new but not necessarily aesthetic.

YOUR PRACTICE OF TATTOOING Technique This experienced person in his forties has been tattooing for fourteen years and shows a conception of his art filled with wisdom: “tattooing is a lifetime work where you need to learn continuously from everything and everyone and keep open minded as well as listening to others.” He started out on human props, first years scratching his buddies with whom he’d play music and skate. But none of these tattoos from that time are visible because he executed everyone, he says with a smile. They, in fact, still bear the marks when he started out but none of them have been covered up.

The positioning of his pieces, the play with the roundness of the body, the anatomy in general is always relevant (dinosaur mouths under the armpits…). For Romain, like many tattoo artists, the first question is “what do you want to do and where ?”. He develops well thought out conceptions of the placement approach: “If we consider the body like a comic book where every area to tattoo is a different page, you’ll bring a particular attention to each page: you won’t tattoo a sleeve the same way you’d do for a backpiece. Your arm will be cut into four parts: the front of the arm with the biceps and the shoulder, then the upper side of the forearm, the inside of the forearm and finally inside the biceps. Therefore, if you do a piece on a whole arm, there needs to be something happening on all of those four parts and each part is read differently. So you’ll be careful that these parts can turn, that there’s movement. You won't tattoo a character’s back inside the arm because that’s not interesting and if there’s just that on a whole part… that’s just great !” he says with irony.

Moreover, his tattoo style is defined by pieces with framing, points of views which value the dynamic and movement because: “the tattoo is a drawing which is static on a moving body. If that moving body is illustrated with very static pieces, this is unpleasant to the eye”. A lover of drawing, in which he loves the lines, forms, Romain searches “a drawing which is easy to read without having to add something else to better understand such as colours”, He draws a lot with only black and lines.

Have you already used synthetic skin ? What do you think about it ? I believe synthetic skin or an orange, there isn’t really a difference. If you really want to know what is tattooing, you have to tattoo a real person. Pork skin grabbed at the butchers, hasn’t got any blood in it. Therefore there isn’t the same reaction to the tattoo: the skin is becoming necrotic, it isn’t irrigated, it’s no longer a living skin which reacts. A synthetic skin, is the same thing. If you tattoo synthetic skin or your grandma’s couch it’s the same thing… You can’t have the texture of real skin with synthetic skin besides there are other factors: the customer’s nerves, his movements, the skin’s tension and movement. Synthetic skin is stiff. You have to learn how to stretch the skin to tattoo and wiping the blood off. Moreover, you won’t tattoo a neck the same way you’ll tattoo inside an arm, biceps, a foot or a hand…

Themes Nourished by the Hammer movies (Dracula, Frankenstein…) and comics, especially « Bernie Wrightson, the world’s greatest cartoonist”. Romain likes tattooing creatures and characters that come from this universe but also more classic themes such as skulls… Though he confesses that he doesn't have a topic of predilection, he's always attentive to the soon to come tattooed customer. Thinking about the new piece in relation to that person, his requests and body.

MUSIC Among his other passions, music has a big place in his heart. His father listened to a lot of music and Romain dived into it when he was young while listening to his father's record collection composed of references that go from Rod Stewart, BB King to Dire Straits passing by The Jackson Five... Therefore he grew a big interest that pushed him to listen to classical music and jazz. Some of his tastes got anchored pretty quickly : « you don't know why, but sometimes you have more affinity for a thing than another » he says. For him it happened around british rock n' roll music and old british ska music such as The Smiths, The Jam, The Clash, Bad Manners, Specials, Madness as well as american ska, rocksteady : Toots and the Maytals, Don Drummond and Hardcore that he’ll soon discover later on in the skate world: Subhumans, Black Flag, Minor Threat. An another note, his mother worked at the town's theatre of Le Mans. Doors to the shows were easily opened to him and so the young Romain got to see many gigs, particularly Europa Jazz. He finds similarities in those styles: jazz, rocksteady, hardcore, hiphop which nourishes him and makes him want to practice: the drums, guitar, bass and saxophone which turns out to be his favourite instrument and he ends up playing in ska bands (Hot Tongs and later Rude Boy System). His father encourages him along this path (as long as school isn't neglected) and Romain records his first album at the age of fifteen and pursues his career until the age of 27. He lives in a period of music and skateboard.

SPORT Romain starts skating at the age of seven and of course watches skateboard videos in which the background music (which is often Hardcore) seduces him. For years, he rides day and night. He spends then a lot of time on the streets. He also does some Thai boxing, Taekwondo, full contact and traditional boxing. He boxes at least 10 hours every week, skates from 40 to 50 hours per week ! And skating brought him closer to the tattoo world. « I wanted to start inking very young. My brother wanted to buy a tattoo gun when I was fourteen, my parents didn't want to, fearing that I would end up covered in horrible tattoos at the age of eighteen ». At the time he does a lot of skateboarding and obtains a sponsorship. On the drawing side of things, he does record sleeves, band logos and the skate brand for whom he rides. Nevertheless, as Romain explains: « Riding caused a lot of injuries so you lose your sponsor (laughs), punk-hardcore and ska aren't really commercial music so you can't live off of it and yet when growing up, your needs grow as well... ». He continues music and tattoo in parallel and ends by choosing the latter. He also does some diving and even meets sharks, an animal he's fond of. He's familiar with the green and practices golf keenly. Needless to say, he always achieves an honorable level in every passion he gets into. And besides sport, music and tattoo ? When Romain assures that you can't fully invest yourself in many different domains, he means : “you can't do everything at the same time but you can get into your passions successively and still cultivate them in parallel” and, like he says : « from then on, once you put yourself into something, it gives so much back. » On the other hand, he specifies: « you don't see me painting because it's not my thing, I did scribble a bit on walls but you have to spend a lot of time... I like the instant side of drawing and I like tattooing because I like the idea of working on something alive. The fact that it is a moving medium, I love the texture and prefer the end result of a tattoo on the skin compared to a painting on a canvas. At the moment, I really feel like engraving » he confesses. He indeed finds analogy with tattoos : start from a drawing, working the matter (in this case, wood for example is a living matter). Big thanks to Romain. Report by Eric Guillamaud