Afterlife Volume II is a study of two artists who arrived at Japanese tattooing through entirely different paths and whose respective commitments to the craft represent two of the most considered artistic practices in the field today.

Chris Garver has been tattooing since 1986, when, at sixteen, he encountered the work of Ed Hardy and DeVita in a Pittsburgh shop and understood immediately that tattooing was the medium he had been looking for. Over the four decades since, he has developed a body of work rooted in Japanese imagery and executed through a sensibility that is entirely his own. Built from the influence of Greg Irons and Jack Rudy, refined through years at landmark New York studios including Invisible NYC, and deepened by an extended period of working at Three Tides in Osaka. His approach is one of deliberate restraint: he works largely from memory rather than reference, draws directly onto the body, and values the energy of a mark made without excessive premeditation. Across three interviews conducted at Five Points Tattoo and at his home in New York, Garver speaks with rare candor about the discipline required to sustain a practice of this depth. Through the disruption of a television career he never sought, through the years of rebuilding that followed, and into the quieter, more focused work he has produced since.

Horitomo's trajectory is equally deliberate, if differentlyarrived at. Having already established himself as a skilled practitioner - across Nagoya, Tokyo, and Osaka, and earning recognition within the International tattoo community - he made the uncommon decision to begin again under Horiyoshi III, one of the most revered masters in the history of irezumi. What he undertook was not simply the acquisition of the new technique, but the internalization of a visual philosophy that extends back centuries. Every element of his work - the pairing of subject and season, the logic of contrasting compositional forces, the symbolic weight of a kimono fold - reflects a practitioner who will not execute a motif he cannot fully account for. Interviewed across multiple sessions at State of Grace in San Jose and at his home, Horitomo articulates a philosophy of making that is rigorous, historically grounded, and deeply personal: one must understand the rules before earning the authority to depart from them.

The relationship between these two artists gives this volume its particular resonance. Horitomo has been tattooed by Garver; Garver had followed Horitomo's development with genuine respect. When editor Zac Scheinbaum learned of this history, the pairing became the foundation for a publication that goes well beyond documentation. What Afterlife Volume II offers is not a survey of finished work, but a sustained record of two artists reflecting, with honesty and precision, on what it means to dedicate a life to this craft.

First published in 2018 in an edition of 1,500, this reprint makes available once more one of the most substantive publications in Afterlife Press's catalogue - and one of the most searching examination for contemporary tattooing in print.