A living archive of tattoo history, its artists, its literature, and the cultures that carry it.
The Halls of Ink is built and kept by Dakota Weik, a tattoo ethnographer, documentary filmmaker, and apprentice tattoo artist, working under the name Inked Abroad. Every hall, record, and page here is made by one person, gathered from the artists and communities who live this craft.
See the work and the projectsMost of tattooing's history was never written down. Artists retire, studios close, traditions fade, and the record of who made what, and where, and why, disappears with them.
What does survive often lives on platforms built to be temporary. Accounts vanish, feeds bury the past, and a life's work can go dark overnight.
The Archives hold that record in one place, permanently. Today that means over 1,900 artists across 78 countries, 126 volumes of tattoo literature, and a growing record of the traditions behind them.
The directory of artists, studios, and conventions.
Searchable by style, city, and country. Each profile holds an artist's work, where they are based, and where they travel. This is the heart of the Halls, and it grows every week.
Enter the Archive126 volumes of tattoo literature.
Rare and essential books on tattooing, gathered in one place. Histories, monographs, and out of print volumes that are difficult to find anywhere else.
Browse the LibraryHand tapped and ancestral practices.
Ancestral tattooing documented with the people who carry it. Built together with the communities whose traditions are recorded, never taken from them.
Enter the HallLiving pages for tattoo conventions worldwide.
Each convention gets a page built around its city: the lineup, the schedule, and the places worth knowing while you are there.
See the ConventionsWhere collectors record the tattoos they carry.
A collector's record of every tattoo, credited to the artist who made it. Each entry becomes part of the archive, a mark preserved beside its maker.
Create a PassportGiving back to the cultures this record comes from.
The Halls of Ink Foundation directs 15 percent of every merch and print sale toward education for indigenous children reclaiming their culture.
Visit the FoundationEverything gathered here is the beginning of something physical. The long term goal is a museum for tattooing, a place where the archive, the library, and the traditions live in a building rather than only on a screen.
It is not built yet. It is being built slowly, and this archive is its foundation.