Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia Vol. 1-3

[Russian] [Criminal] [Tattoos]

Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia, Volumes 1-3

Fuel Publishing, UK. 2008-2009. The first three volumes of the series, all in hardcover, like new editions. Note that volume 1 is the 2009 reprint.

From the publisher:

The photographs, drawings and texts published in this book art part of a collection of more than three thousand tattoos accumulated over a lifetime by prison attendant Danzig Baldaev. Tattoos were his gateway into a secret world in which he acted as ethnographer, recording the rituals of a closed society. The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and sometimes just strange, reflecting as they do the lives and traditions of convicts."

I am happy to offer all three volumes of this incredible visual document of Russian traditional tattooing. It's hard to capture how big an impact these made upon release; there was a real totemic quality to that first volume that is hardly matched to this day. Likely because it's masterfully laid out, well written, and deeply intriguing. Be happy you're not in prison for siphoning kerosene outside of Magnitogorsk, but take inspiration from the folk genius within.