Told by the neighborhood boys that she cannot be a pirate, Cece seeks reassurance from her grandfather who knows about boats and has tattoos.

Everyone else knows the truth about you, now you can know it, too. That's the slogan. The product: a junky contraption that tattoos personalized revelations on its users' forearms. It's an old con, playing on the fear that we are obvious to everybody except ourselves. This particular one's been circulating New York since the 1960s. The ad works. And, oddly enough, so might the device... A small stream of city dwellers buy into this cult of the epiphany...

"Once the mark of an underground subculture, tattoos have well and truly stepped out of the shadows and into the streets. Join photographer Nicolas Brulez as he searches Paris, Berlin, and beyond for the most innovative and stylish tattoos in the world"--Page 4 of cover.