So I'm watching NCIS Los Angeles and you know the drill in every detective show since, well forever. Suspect has a tattoo and in the case LL Cool J says something to the effect I know that artist work as they try to ID a suspect. Is that even possible today? With everybody and their grandmothers sporting multiple overlapping ink and a tattoo salon on every other street corner can any possible say I know X's style. And poor Jane Doe was able to afford and commission the premium tattoo artist to do her exclusive piece of art work.
Personally I think you would only really know someone else's work if a) their your tattoo artist or b) you're a tattoo artist and familiar with their work. I do agree that it is upsetting how many tattoo places there are. And not all of them good which makes it increasingly difficult to choose one to have some good work done
Sure, you can know a particular artist's work, but it depends on whether they actually have a distinctive style or not, and whether they do original artwork or not. There's one guy in my city who works exclusively in black ink. He's really, really talented at conveying depth and placement and he works at one of the better-known (but, like most around here, relatively affordable) parlors, so many people would recognize his work. A lot would hinge on the size and quality of the tattoo community in the city in question as well. We have a small, but elite, community of tattoo parlors, so several of the artists are well-known to the general tattoo-consuming public, and probably to the cops.