Tattoo Life July/August 2026

Cover Girl: Iolanda Leali

Born in Italy, with roots in Guinea Conakry and now based in France, the artistic journey of Iolanda Leali moves between intuition and structure, blending organic movement with technical precision. In this interview, our cover girl shares her vision of tattooing as a dialogue between body and art — an ever-evolving equilibrium, built over time through experience, connection and research.

Chat at the top with Ben Volt

Ben Volt, tattoo artist and musician, is the pioneer of a deeply personal style he has chosen to call “Post-Tribal Architecture.” He works in his private studio in a truly idyllic location: Hilo, Hawaii, right on the Big Island of the archipelago. Ben employs the Blackwork technique to create eloquent tattoos of an oceanic and Polynesian nature, in which harmonious and “hypnotic” structures simultaneously define and captivate.

John Eric Basilio: Street Pop and Realism in bold

John Eric Basilio, originally from the Philippines, is now based in the U.S. His journey began in his home country, where — as he tells us in this interview — he learned the fundamentals and developed his discipline, before finding his direction in Street Pop Art and creating a style of his own in which bold, vibrant elements blend with Realism and a distinct edge.

Inkdustry: CAM Supply

CAM Supply is today synonymous with reliability, ground-breaking ideas, and a genuine connection with the artistic community. A company that emerged in the early Nineties to meet the simple but urgent need of ensuring artists have access to quality tools with guaranteed supply. Among the countless creative trajectories that have shaped the contemporary tattoo scene, for thirty years now CAM has been working behind the scenes with a tremendous impact on the industry.

Body Story: the bodysuit by Natalie Nox

A bodysuit is never just an artwork. It is a long-term collaboration, a shared construction, and, in many ways, a mutual commitment to something that neither side can fully predict at the beginning. This is how Natalie Nox introduces the work we present in these pages: a dialogue between abstraction and organic structure, with a strong emphasis on natural patterns, particularly rock formations.

Portfolio: Claude Bencimon

In this portfolio we present the work of Claude Bencimon whom we met in Paris at the last Mondial du Tatouage where his exhibited work left a strong impression on us. The images published in Tattoo Life are part of the same project in which Claude captures the world of tattooing through the lens of human relationships: direct, spontaneous, and free of judgment.

Daniela Sagel

The exquisitely black-and-grey tattoos created by Austrian artist Daniela Sagel flow like snakes in motion. Her focus is on flow, not replication — she doesn’t reproduce a real snake, she captures its movement. To get to know her better, you might want to head to Portugal. Or catch her on her never-ending tour, which this year will once again take her across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Australia. 

Karolina Klimczak

Karolina was born in Poland, where she also completed her apprenticeship, but it was in Aberdeen, Scotland, that she truly flourished as a tattoo artist specialising in colour realism. She builds stories around her designs — there has to be emotion, not “passport photo” tattoos. Her work is defined by strong contrast, and she has a particular love for turquoise and orange, colours that keep the tattoo vivid and bold long after it has healed.

Tattoo shop: welcome to True Love Tattoo, Madrid

In our journey around the world bringing you the best tattoo shops, our next stop is in Madrid, Spain, to visit True Love Tattoo. As its founder Gustavo Barahona. aka El Bara, explains, this is an old-school tattoo shop driven by a love of Traditional shared by much of the team. At the same time, the studio doesn’t want to limit itself to a single style, offering high-quality work across the most in-demand styles, from Japanese to Neo Traditional.

JotaPaint: frogs, portraits and lettering

Allow us to introduce JotaPaint, an urban artist — as he likes to call himself — from Barcelona, whose journey unfolds between graffiti and tattooing. He works at Family Art Tattoo, in the Gothic Quarter, and what stands out about his artistic profile is precisely its nature as a meeting point between different visual languages. His work moves between Pop Realism, Japanese folklore and Neo Traditional, giving life to a world where portraits of wizened faces mingle with frogs and graffiti-style lettering.

Anatomy and Ornamental: the Neo Japanese of Andy Molotov

Born in Kaliningrad, once the Königsberg of East Prussia, Andy Molotov came to tattooing late, turning what began as a personal passion into a professional career. His work today is characterised by large-scale Japanese-inspired Ornamental compositions designed to flow in harmony with the body. He currently works at the @molotovtattoo collective in Kaliningrad, with regularl guest spots in Moscow.

…and much more

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