Above Portrait #11, Monk, from Sacred Ink. (©Cedric Arnold/Courtesy the photographer).

Dating back to the Angkor period of the 9th to 15 centuries, the spiritual Yantra or Sak Yant tattoo tradition (Sak means to tap, whilst yant is derived from the Sanskrit word yantra, meaning scared geometrical design), is practiced across southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. 

Bangkok based Cedric Arnold explores the complexity of yantra as practiced in Thailand, in his series Sacred Ink. Having begun with a chance encounter, when the photographer met a shipyard worker covered in yantra tattoos, and another who Arnold describes as a young Iggy Pop-like taxi driver, and a fierce looking market trader who looked more like a hit man, his early portraits grew into a long-term a commitment to explore this fascinating symbolic subculture.

Above Untitled, from Sacred Ink. (©Cedric Arnold/Courtesy the photographer).

Working with both large-format and Polaroid cameras, Arnold presents through a series of formal black-and-white portraits — the negatives of which are chemically altered by brushing various chemicals onto the emulsion — and documentary images, an in-depth insight into the practitioners of this powerful art. From the Wicha, and Buddhist monks, who traditionally apply the tattoo’s with a long, sharpened piece of bamboo called a Mai Sak, or a long metal spike known as a Khem Sak, to the followers whose bodies become a canvas, with every inch of flesh covered in a tattoo of specific meaning, purpose, and significance.

With Thai society deeply rooted in superstition, the Yantra tradition is growing in popularity, and, in Arnold’s photographs we experience the intensity and atmosphere of this tradition as a tattoo master, wearing a sacred mask, applies a tattoo to the back of one of his disciples during a special ceremony. With scripts based on a mixture ancient Khmer, and the original Buddhist Pali, along with figures and mythical creatures, Arnold documents the world of boxers, monks, construction workers, policemen, soldiers, taxi drivers, shipyards workers, a shaman, and tattoo masters; both men and women, who are each connected through their inked protection from evil spirits and bad luck.

Above Portraits #3, Market Trader, from Sacred Ink. (©Cedric Arnold/Courtesy the photographer).

Arnold’s powerful, yet sensitive portraits present a mystical subculture through its rituals, and symbols; a chest etched with a fierce leaping tiger, a hand adorned with images of geckos on each finger, a back protected by a monkey God, or a shoulder inscribed with ancient Khmer text, the tattoos, are, says Arnold, ‘a testament to the complex spiritual makeup of Thai society, incorporating elements of Buddhism, Animism, Brahmanism and Hinduism,’ which Arnold begins to decipher in Sacred Ink.

Sacred Ink, is at The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok until 25 June 2011.