Alex Binnie was born Alexander Michael Steven Binnie, on 11 July 1959, in Oxford, England. He is primarily known as a tattooist, and is also a printmaker; he has been a musician and performance artist. As a tattoo artist he is known for being one of a group of artists who originated and popularized the use of large-scale tribal design (non-western, often Polynesian, and also involving elements of fusion across regional boundaries and traditions) in the West. His work reached a wide public with the publication of 1000 Tattoos by Henk Schiffmacher.