Ink-Congruities...

Yesterday, my eye wandered...searching for disparities and asymmetries, as we re-entered the French Quarter. As we approached Café du Monde for another round of powdered sugar and fried dough, I walked past a tourist just sitting...his purposeful self-commodification emblazoned on his right forearm. I asked if my camera could scan his barcode and he said, "sure."

Ink-Commodified Human

Moments later while under the spell of café au lait, I contemplated the alternative readings of this linear impression. A critique of consumer society? An indelible identification with a consumer product?

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Today, I strolled along Magazine Street in the Uptown section bored by the banality of one antique shop after another. Then I saw these mannequins in a storefront window and stopped, and stared.

Humanized Ink-Commodity

An academic assonance played in my head...lyrics borrowed from Claude Lévi-Strauss' text La Pensée Sauvage, and The Who's song Tattoo. The self-induced pedantic seizure distilled into rhetorical ironies: "Hey mannequin ladies...are your tattoos a brand of conviction, isolation or fraternization? Hey barcode tourist...does your tattoo make you feel plastic, metallic, or elastic?"