120 mm black and white film .

Here my visit to the remote village of Kalinga / Buscalan in northern Philippines, hiking for hours through rice fields to reach the Butbut tribe and get a traditional tattoo from 100 years old, at that time ,lady Apo Wang Od - the last mambabatok - the oldest tattoo artist in the world.

Whang-od’s tribal tattoo ink is made up of charcoal and water. Once mixed, it is tapped into the skin using a thorn from a citrus tree — either from calamansi or pomelo. The thorn is then attached to a 12-inch long bamboo stick and from there, Whang-od will start tapping it deep into your skin. She works with the same traditional designs that have adorned her tribe for centuries. Her personal “signature” tattoo consists of three dots, representing herself and her blood-related apprentices in her art.

Whang-od, now 104, began her career as a teenager tattooing headhunters and warriors from her tribe, the Butbut people, who would earn their ink after killing to protect their community from enemies . She never married. She lost her significant other during the Japanese occupation and since then, Whang-od has stayed single. Without a child of her own to teach, she is training her grandniece Grace Palicas to continue the tribe’s tattoo tradition. She believes that she can only pass it to her bloodline because if someone outside the tribe were to continue the tradition, the tattoo would be infected.

In My SkiN - The Last MambaBatok