Marta Zdanowicz, a piercer in Warsaw, Poland, is like many piercers, a big fan of the movie and manga series Ichi the Killer, a film so obscenely violent that it has been broadly censored and remains illegal in Norway — even as a privately purchased video — even today. As you can see, this influenced the design of her “invisible tattoo” (by Aldona from Szerytattoo in Warsaw) is deeply influenced by the scars on Kakihara’s face. The UV ink healed quickly for her without problems — more quickly in fact than any of her “normal” tattoos (while she was at it she also added UV ink to the spirals on her neck, which you can click here to see, and those healed trouble-free as well — don’t miss the great sideburn bars in this picture). This first set of pictures shows the tattoo fresh and in its healed UV state, and in the second picture set you see it contrasted with Kakihara from Ichi the Killer.

Of course when you’re talking about a tattoo that is UV ink and nothing but, the million-dollar question is always how much the UV ink is going to show up in regular light. In the first photo below you can still see it quite easily, but that photo was taken just a few weeks after being done so it is to be expected that it would still be visible. The second photo is a couple months later and you can still see it if you know where to look and what you’re seeing, but it’s much, much fainter. This is something that people should always be aware of when getting UV-only work — it is always possible that it is visible to some extent. This is both due to unavoidable issues, the minor scarring of the skin that all tattoos should be expected to cause, as well as errors by the tattoo artist such as slightly contaminating the ink with the stencil or marker used to draw the design, or metal or old ink from the tubes if the tattooist is not using single-use disposable tubes.