CHAIM
MACHLEV
Story: Ákos Bánfalvi / Photography: Lukas
Chaim Machlev was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel thirty-three years ago, and moved to Berlin two
years ago to learn how to tattoo. He had a pretty normal childhood; Chaim was not a popular child at all
and spent most of his childhood in front of his computer. He never had any artistic background or created art besides playing a guitar as a hobby. In these early years, drawing and tattooing never crossed
his mind.
What made you want to become a tattoo artist and how long have you been tattooing?
I was not attracted to tattoos as much before I started to think about getting one, which I can’t really explain why it happened. I think that there is a stage in life in which everyone thinks about getting a tattoo
and this also makes me feel at times that us humans are in our natural state when we are tattooed. The
reasons can vary and most of us in the Western world, unfortunately, have some sort of a pattern in
our heads that we connected tattoos with. In that pattern, for most people, are connections between tattooing and drugs, crime, and many other negative associations. It’s also like that in my home country,
but I have to say that there is a huge movement of tattooed people in Tel Aviv which is really opening
people’s eyes. When you get your first tattoo, you no longer have those prejudices as you start to
understand the beauty of deciding to change your body and let someone else be a major part of that.
After the first tattoo, the distance to getting another one becomes shorter and this is exactly the reason
that many non-tattooed people think that tattooing is addictive.
When did your interest in tattoos begin? And how long was it from then until you got your first
one?
I got my first tattoo three years ago by Avi Vanunu at Psycho Studio in Tel Aviv and it was one of the
strongest impacts of my life. I found the procedure super spiritual and life-changing. I still try to understand it, but I believe that when I lost the negative perception towards tattooing that I had, I lost a lot of
additional negative prejudices that I had inside me towards other stuff that society chooses to see as
something that is wrong or unacceptable. This really led me to the point in life to understand that something has to be done and I couldn’t stop thinking about tattoos. I started to see it in my dreams, every
person that I saw I thought about lines that goes through their body and how interesting it would be to
actually be a tattooer that decides which lines flows better for an individual body, dedicating your life to
live the experience of changing people’s bodies as a routine. Back then, I was a project manager in an
IT comp any, in charge of twenty-two workers and had a pretty comfortable life from a materialistic point
of view. The thoughts about tattoos couldn’t let me go and I decided to get another tattoo just to better
understand the process. After the second tattoo, it was clear that some action needed to be taken and I
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