Ami James (born April 6, 1972), is an Israeli-produced tattoo artist. His dad, an American, converted to Judaism three years before moving to Israel, where he joined the Israeli military and met James’ mom. James lived in both Israel and Egypt as a kid, and spent much of his youth without his dad who left the family when James was four years of age. Suffering from acute ADD, James describes that he was drawn into artwork and tattooing from a young age as his dad had tats and was also a painter.
James moved to America aged 11 or 12, residing together with his dad’s parents before moving to Miami in the age of 12. He moved back to Israel in his teens and finished his military service in the Israel Defense Forces as a sniper. In the age of 15 he got his first tattoo, an encounter which made him determined to be a tattoo artist himself. In 1992, he began his apprenticeship with tattoo artist Lou at “Tattoos By Lou”. He’s also created layouts for Motorola’s RAZR V3 mobile phones. His wife, Jordan, gave birth to their very first kid, Shayli Haylen James on August 3, 2008.
In 1996 he lived for several months in Denmark, where he did tats. He shown on his website he was moving to New York and that his new show “NY Ink” intended to start filming in March 2011. The show premiered on June 2, 2011. It is often declared that Ami James is starting a tattoo studio, ‘Love Hate Social Club’ in London, UK in November 2012. The tattoo studio may have several guest tattoo artists including, Darren Brass, Megan Massacre and Chris Nez. In 2013 James teamed up with PETA within an advertisement for their “Ink Not Mink” effort. James also co-founded Tattoodo, a web-based platform to get a custom tattoo design, which started about the 9th of May, 2013.