It’s Tattoo Time

Regular readers of the OV blog know that I’m a huge Ed Hardy fan.
Before the clothing (etc) line, Ed’s name was synonymous with the constant evolution of Tattoo Culture. Have you read the Tattoo Time series? Every volume is packed full of amazing content. You can directly trace trends that have revolutionized tattooing (and we’d be fooling ourselves into thinking that trends aren’t worth noting, even amongst world class tattooers) back to almost every issue of Tattoo Time.

New Tribalism.
Tattoo Magic.
Music and Sea.
Life and Death.
Art from the Heart.

They’re books that even decades later are relevant to the tattoo world. I spent the morning rereading them, sequentially. The last volume, Art from the Heart, was probably the most influential to me; Daniel Higgs, Dave Lum, Eddy Deutsche, Mike Malone, Bob Shaw. You can’t beat it, and if you haven’t checked it out… get off your ass and find it.

This is another photo of a very curly headed Ed tattooing in the late 1970s/early 1980s. I’ve scanned a few more and will drop them here from time to time. The client in this picture also has a full torso by Ed.