Rosie Camanga - Folk Art Tattoo Flash

Reprint 2024

Tino "Rosie" Camanga (born 1910) came to Honolulu from his native Philippines sometime prior to World War II. After observing fellow Filipinos tattooing in the many shops in the downtown/Chinatown area, Rosie was granted a part-time job as a tattooer in 1944, and began a career birthed in wartime Honolulu that lasted until the 1990s.

Rosie's primitive, distinctive, obsessively- drawn flash segued from standardized versions of classic tattoo designs to eccentric and mysterious scenarios that were his alone. The format of flash sheets were mere jumping-off points for the world he created. Often sheets were collaged with images he liked, clipped from a magazine, assembled from previous designs, or merely depicting things and sentiments never seen in any other tattoo context. He continued to draw after he stopped tattooing, using the flash format for ever more unexpected forms.