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Dr. Woo
Talent: Dr. Woo
Photographer: Rodrigo Ramirez + Ethan White
Lighting: Guicho Palma
DP/Director: Everett Bouwer
In the sprawling cultural collage that is Los Angeles, few artists embody the city’s layered identity quite like Dr. Woo. A quiet icon in the world of tattooing, Woo’s signature single-needle, black-and-gray linework has etched itself into skin and cultural consciousness alike. But to reduce him to a tattoo artist would miss the breadth of his vision. Woo is, above all, a visual thinker—someone whose practice stretches beyond the needle into photography, design, and a broader artistic dialogue rooted in emotion, precision, and timelessness.
Where most chase virality, Woo chases feeling. His work is grounded in a philosophy shaped by heritage, environment, and introspection. A child of LA’s endless intersections—linguistic, cultural, creative—he filters the chaos of the world through a stark and sensitive monochrome lens. In doing so, he’s built a visual language that doesn’t shout, but lingers, quietly shifting how we perceive intimacy, memory, and connection.
In conversation with STADE, Dr. Woo reflects on the tension between artist and artisan, the emotional resonance of black and white, and the way growing up amidst a swirl of languages and identities has informed not just his aesthetic but his worldview.
Dr. Woo:
I'm Doctor Woo, born in Los Angeles. I'm a tattoo artist and an artist. Friends and family call me Woo.
STADE:
Do you have a preference [between the two titles]?
Dr. Woo:
I do separate the two. I think, as a tattoo artist, I do I come from the school of tattooing as a trade. It's an artisanal practice. And as an artist, you know, there are no boundaries to what you can do or how you feel. You have the emotions and the feelings that you invoke on others who look at your work. Tattooing, to me, is more of a collaborative effort where the main goal is to make sure the client is happy with what they have. Not my artistic expression.
STADE:
In your world, black and white seem to be a lens through which you view the world, both through tattooing and photography. Can you share how you think this use of monochrome reflects your personal philosophy or how you see the world around you?
Dr. Woo:
When I was practicing or getting into art and learning and being educated, so much of it was with gradients and negative space and contrast and seeing how emotionally all those things can play together and tie into a visual. It always resonated with me. And when you shoot things in black and white, or do when I do tattoos in black and white or gray, I think there's a bit of a timelessness to it; the emotions are less emotional than colors. Colors, I feel, trigger certain emotions, whereas black and white have this overarching emotion that we have in our pockets at all
Growing up and living within diverse cultural influences, how do you feel your background has shaped your use of black and white in your artwork? Is there a deeper connection between your heritage and the way you perceive light, shadow, and contrast?
Dr. Woo:
I think growing up in LA, you're just from birth, on top of each other, on top of different cultures. You know, I went home and my parents spoke a different language. I went to school, the teachers spoke a different language. The kids spoke different languages. And together, that kind of automated into this zone of interwebs and different, crossovers and sometimes, like seeing the world in black and white in that monochromatic way, filters it all down to the sameness that we feel inside, even though our outside factors change so many things of who we are. But through a black and white lens, it ties us all together into one of the same story. I think, all our perspectives are different, but seeing things through a black and white lens, I think the dramatic inclination of storytelling and how we receive information and how we appreciate art and design and how we appreciate the stillness of life, is, something that binds us all together, even though we come from different backgrounds.