A Life in Tattoos

Emiko Omori’s documentary “Ed Hardy: Tattoo The World” is an honest retrospective of the famed American tattoo artist Donald Edward Talbot Hardy.

Omori, who received critical acclaim for her 1999 documentary “Rabbit In The Moon,” which won the Cinematography Award for Documentary at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, does it all in this film. Omori is credited for writing, producing, editing and directing here. Her lone effort is noticeable in the low budget quality of the film, but that does not take away from the great deal of research about the unique evolving American art culture taking place in Southern California starting from the 1950s and onward.

The film begins with the humorous image of a ten-year-old Hardy covered by, what is assumed and later verified, hand drawn tattoos. One gets the clear impression from the smile on young Hardy’s face that he knew who he was destined to be right from the very beginning.

“I was just blown away by the power of the whole tattoo thing, about how intense it was, these permanent pictures on people, and the graphic impact, the way they were created graphically, the stylistic outlines, the black outline, and heavy shading, and very simple color combinations,” recalls the lively sixty six year old. “And of course the iconography, that these were distillations of everything of being human was about, in an exaggerated way.”

The film is largely an interview between Omori, who at one point relives getting her first tattoo from Hardy and Hardy. The conversations cover Hardy’s humble beginnings, as the only son of a single mother, to his present day status as an American icon.

The stories, between Hardy’s beginning and his present day fame, make “Tattoo The World” worth watching. Omori and her team of archival researchers have collected everything one could possibly find about Hardy and the American tattoo culture in the past fifty years. The film presents its audience an interactive history about early tattoo artists such as Bert Grimm, Samuel M. Steward and Sailor Jerry Collins. All the while Omori presents the artists of Hardy’s generation who aren’t well known, but had a great impact on Hardy, such as the likes of Ed Kienholz, Llyn Foulkes and Edward Ruscha.

Finally, the hidden gem in Omori’s film is Hardy’s phenomenal painting, “The 2000 Dragons Scroll.” Omori has Hardy unfurls his masterpiece for this film.

Painted in 2000, to commemorate the Year of the Dragon of the Asian zodiac, Hardy painted 2,000 dragons on a four feet by five hundred feet scroll. The 2000 Dragons segment is also included as a bonus DVD feature, giving audiences a rare closer look at Hardy’s awe-inspiring mystical creations.

Tattoo The World is a great documentary film archiving Hardy’s prolific career. Omori’s film instills a greater appreciation to the difficulties this humble, soft spoken, and intelligent artist has experienced on his road to success.

Most importantly, Omori’s film will provide the rare opportunity to hear history from the very man who will forever on be part of the history.

You can follow Kashfi Fahim on Twitter @kashfifahim