What do former bandits look like if you wash off their tattoos

When you meet a fully tattooed person somewhere in a residential area on the outskirts, probably not the best thoughts are spinning in your head. But sometimes (if not always) these are just stereotypes that only complicate the lives of these people. This topic was raised by photographer Steven Burton (Steven Burton) in his photo project Skin Deep ("At the depth of the skin"). As part of the project, he removes tattoos from the bodies of former members of criminal gangs to show the person who is hiding under the drawings.

"When I started creating Skin Deep, I had a simple concept: to make portraits of heavily tattooed ex-bandits and remove tattoos using digital retouching to get portraits before and after," Burton says on his page on the Kickstarter fundraising portal. — Most of the cool guys or girls have not seen themselves without tattoos already for several decades, so during the interviews I showed them photos. They had a very strong emotional reaction."

"These pictures provoke an inner revelation in the characters and raise questions about how our society perceives and judges people with tattoos and how this stigma becomes so strong that it even affects the self-image of these former members of criminal gangs."

To create this project and publish a photo album, Stephen Burton spent two years and more than 400 hours working on Photoshop. He started a page on Kickstarter to attract funding and for this socially significant photo project to continue.