26. Takahiro Kitamura on Don Ed Hardy
My name is Takahiro Kitamura, and I’m the curator of the Perseverance exhibit. This is a piece by the one and only Don Ed Hardy, coined as the godfather of modern tattooing, and I think this is actually a pretty accurate term, especially in terms of what we’re talking about now. Certainly Ed Hardy wasn’t the first person to get tattooed in Japan – although he did it in the 70s – but he really is instrumental in educating people in America about Japanese tattooing.
He brought many Japanese masters over to America, his whole…everything about Ed is about education and teaching people about tattoos. This is a beautiful Tomomori that Ed did in the 80s, and we photographed it last year – looks great, of course – and we’re just really proud to have Ed in this exhibit. It seems like Ed is probably the single most important Westerner when it comes to Japanese tattooing, and this show would not have been complete without him.
