The article examines Jacopo Bezzi’s volume Il tatuaggio come archivio vivente. Cartografie del corpo e sua documentalità, highlighting its proposal to interpret tattooing not merely as an aesthetic or identity-related form of expression, but as a form of documentation and memory inscribed on the body. Through three case studies, the volume explores the relationship between tattooing, autobiography, artistic practices, belonging, and the memory of war. The metaphor of the “living archive” provides an opportunity to reflect on the materiality of memory and the boundaries of documentation, showing how the body can simultaneously be the producer, medium, and object of documentary practices. The article also highlights the implications for libraries and archives, particularly with regard to contextualization, consent, privacy, and the subject’s participation in the documentation process. Tattooing thus emerges as an exemplary case through which to reconsider the relationship between trace, person, time, memory, and interpretation, also in an age characterized by the digital reproduction and circulation of bodily representations.