Black and grey portrait tattoo of two people kissing on a forearm, with shaded slicked hair and geometric shapes below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Kissing faces portrait on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo of two stylised faces in a close kiss, one face overlapping the other, with sleek swept-back hair at the top. The design uses fine linework and smooth grey shading, with stippled texture in the hair and a dark geometric motif at the base. The image is a close, straight-on shot of the forearm against a plain background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maureen,

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The Aske order came in on Tuesday, two negatives taped to a card with a note asking me to make them kiss. Mr Aske sails for Rotterdam on the Friday, and his fiancée, Eileen, has a chest that will not let her stand in a studio for more than ten minutes. So they sent me her portrait from the Whitsun dance and his from a cold morning on the quay, and I was to make one photograph out of the two.

I worked at the bench under the north window until the light went grey. I laid his profile over her face on the enlarger, then pencilled the join with a sable brush so fine that the hair at his brow ran into the wave of her curls. Where the lips had to meet I lost an hour to a single millimetre. Shadow is the trick. Put the darkness on the wrong side and a man becomes a stranger. The black geometry at the bottom, the diamonds of a bow tie and the lattice of the fire escape outside her window, was only there to hold the composition still.

When I printed it, the two faces leaned into one another so exactly that I had to look twice to find the seam. I took the print round myself on Friday morning. Eileen held it to the light for a long while, then asked me which of them had been the one to lean in first.

I told her the truth, which is that neither of them had. I had done it for them.

Yours in haste, Ruth

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