The needle now
Single-use needles, gloves and an autoclave are the difference between a hand tradition in 1882 and the same hand tradition today.
The open questions
Questions this site cannot settle: whose designs, whose hands, whose photographs, and what counts as hand-poked at all.
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The photographs
The free pictures of tattooed bodies are mostly colonial-era photographs of people who did not choose to be photographed, or sideshow portraits made…
What counts as hand-poked
The site is called hand poke and half the traditions on it do not poke. Here is the line it draws and why the line is arguable.
Who wrote it down
Most of what is known about the stopped traditions was written by the people whose arrival stopped them.
Whose designs
Several traditions on this site hold that certain designs may not be worn by people who have not earned them. That rule is theirs to state and not…