We recently had the pleasure of meeting Dutch photographer Marloes Verhoeven. Marloes recently completed 2 photo series. They are entitled ‘Lost in Prison’ , which documents life in a womens prison in El Salvador and ‘Adios Tatuajes’, which documents a clinic in San Salvador where young gang members can remove tattoos representative of their gang membership.
After anti-gang laws were approved in Honduras and El Salvador, and a string of killings in Guatemala that were committed by angry neighbors and security forces, gang members have stopped tattooing themselves and have resorted to more subtle, low profile ways of identifying themselves as members of those criminal organizations. Today, gang members with tattooed faces, are either dead, in prison or hiding.
