Vintage Tattoo Girl Before Tattoos Were Popular
This is an image of Artoria Gibbons (Anna Mae Burlingston, 1893 to 1985). The wife of famed tattoo artist Charles “Red” Gibbons. She allowed her husband Red to tattoo over 80% of her body and paraded herself around as a human billboard to show off his work. She later worked as a performer with local sideshows and with Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey from 1921 to 1923. She gained fame thereafter working for numerous carnivals and sideshows displaying her body for photographers and curious audiences willing to pay for her act.
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