Tattooed faces

These people know firsthand what pain is, because they voluntarily experienced it more than once, coloring their faces and bodies with numerous patterns.






Kimberly Vlaminck talks on her cell phone at her home in Kortrijk, Belgium, on June 17, 2009. 18-year-old Kimberly tried to sue a tattoo artist who gave her 56 stars when she asked for just three. Vlamik said that she fell asleep during the procedure. Later, she confessed to giving false testimony. (EPA)



Tattoo artist Ruslan Tumanyants stands outside his Tattoo Box parlor on June 17, 2009 in Kortrijk, Belgium. It was his 18-year-old Kimberly Vlamine (in the previous photo) who accused him of allegedly giving her 56 tattoos on her face instead of the three she requested. (Peter Deconinck, AFP / Getty Images)



Dennis Avner of Tonopa, Nevada, is known around the world as "Cat Man," though he prefers to call himself "Crouching Cat." To become like a cat, Dennis resorted not only to tattoos, but also to surgery. (shadowplay, Flickr)



A man with a chessboard for a face. (Flickr)



Eric Sprague, better known as the Lizard Man, is an artist on freak and other shows. To look like a lizard, he not only got the appropriate tattoos, but also sharpened his teeth, forked his tongue, and injected green ink into his lips. (Getty Images)



Reinhold Moller, a German, explains how he got tattoos on his face outside the Tattoo Museum in Amsterdam on May 10, 1996. The museum's display includes tools, tattoo designs, drawings, pictures, and preserved tattooed human skin. In addition, there are more than 1500 books about the art of tattooing. (Peter Dejong, AP)



Woman with the Most Piercings title Elaine Davidson at the Skin Two Rubber Ball Festival in London. The 16th edition of the festival is held every year. (Getty Images)



Enigma (also known as "Slug") used to perform in the Jim Rose Circus, but now he's a puzzle man. In addition, he has Teflon implants on his forehead in the form of horns. (Flickr)



Tattoo and piercing artist Brent Moffat shows off his new tattoos and piercings outside his salon in Winnipeg, Canada. Moffat says he plans to inject 3,000 surgical needles into his body in memory of those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He had already made it into the Guinness Book of World Records in January 2003 when he injected 702 needles into his legs. In November of the same year, he broke his own record by inserting 900 needles into his body. (Jason Halstead, Winnipeg Sun / AP)



Rapper Game on MTV in New York. (Peter Kramer, Getty Images)



A man shows off his facial tattoos at a tattoo exhibition in Beijing in 2007. (Greg Baker, AP)



A Pacific Islander with body art watches the opening ceremony of the Paris Plage artificial beach in Paris on the banks of the Seine. Since 2002, artificial beaches have appeared in Berlin, Rome and other European capitals. (Bernard Bisson, Getty Images)



47-year-old Firatram from the Ramnami Panth sect in the village of Khapradi in the northern Indian state of Chhattisgarh. This sect, consisting mainly of lower castes, often tattoos bodies with the name of the god Rama. (Prakash Hatvalne, AP)



Mike Tyson shows off his facial tattoos on February 20, 2003 at a press conference before his fight with Clifford Etienne in Memphis, Tennessee. On June 21, 2003, Tyson was arrested after a fight with two men outside a Brooklyn hotel in New York City. He was charged with figligence and disturbing public order. (Tom Casino, Getty Images)