This final volume of previously unpublished drawings and photographs completes the "Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopadia" trilogy. Danzig Baldaevs unparalleled ethnographic achievement, documenting over 3,000 tattoo drawings, was made during a lifetime working as a prison guard. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics and alcohol. In this title, a medieval knight is surrounded by the severed heads of his enemies, a naked woman simultaneously services a man and two dwarfs, a crying President Gorbachev grips a human bone between sabre-like fangs, a group of angels drinks vodka with God on a cloud, and the meanings of these arresting images are explained to the uninitiated eye. Accompanied by graphic photographs showing the grim reality of the Russian prison system and some of the alarming characters that inhabit it, the illustrated criminals of Russia tell the tale of their closed society.

2005-05-26 Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia.

This is truly one of those life changing books. It is surreal, vulgar, explicit and tender in equal measure. I have an interest in tattooing but my wife does not and she was as taken by the Alice in Wonderland otherness of this book as I was. Everything you have never nor will ever need to know about the Russian criminal underground and it's bizarrely profane tattoo culture.