Russian Criminal Tattoo: Encyclopaedia Volume IDanzig Baldaev

The photographs, drawings and texts published in this book are part of a collection of more than 3000 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 Russian convicts.

• ISBN: 9780955006128