Jonathan Shaw (tattoo artist)

Jonathan Dowling Shaw is an American tattoo artist and writer. Returning to the United States in 1976, Shaw relocated to the Bowery neighborhood in Manhattans' Lower East Side where he opened Fun City Tattoo, the oldest tattoo shop in New York City, where he specialized in neo-tribal tattoos and tattooed celebrities as Johnny Depp, Iggy Pop, Jim Jarmusch, Max Cavalera (Sepultura) and Kate Moss. Tattooing, however, had been illegal in New York City in 1961, and wasn't legalized until 1997. Shaw later founded the first magazine exclusively dedicated to tattoos, International Tattoo Art in the 1980s. Shaw sold Fun City in 2002, after only five years of legal operation, to focus on writing. After 28 years tattooing, Jonathan retired from the profession in 2004 and moved back to Rio de Janeiro, where he wrote his first novel Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes, published in 2008 by HarperCollins. His memoir, entitled Scab Vendor, was published in 2017.