About the author
Maarten Hesselt van Dinter was born in 1964. He studied Economics and Econometry at the University
of Amsterdam. After a brief term as an Internet Manager at the European Union, he started his
own multimedia company, designing & producing interactive programs, including three acclaimed CD-ROMs celebrating the 25th anniversary of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
He also designed the famous CD-ROM The World of Tattoo, a compilation of the best work by tattooists such as the Leu Family, Alex Binnie, Horiyoshi III, Rob Roberts, Pat Fish and many others.
While working on this CD-ROM, Maarten became fascinated by the history of tattooing and he soon started travelling the world visiting different cultures and many museums and libraries, including the Library of Congress in America and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The collection of photographs and prints that he assembled over the last ten years is unparalleled. Given the scope of the material, he designed and published a book of flash entitled Tribal Tattoo Design in 1999. More than 50,000 copies have been sold worldwide.
He reserved the photographs and larger prints for his book The World of Tattoo, published in April 2005. This book is unique for its combination of detailed textual information and rare illustrative material. It took eight years of intensive study of an enormous body of literature before the book could be completed and published. Maarten resigned from his post at the prestigious company Philips Design and started studying anthropology at the University of Amsterdam in order to do this.