Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, Volume I. by Baldaev, D.S. and A. Plutser-Sarno - 2003

Göttingen, Germany: Steidle / Fuel, 2003. Hardcover. Near Fine. dustjacket has light scuffs; wear to spine ends.. Volume 1 is burgundy cloth boards with black lettering and stamped design, pink dust jacket with black lettering and design, 400 pp, profusely illustrated throughout in bw. Drawings and foreword, Danzig Baldaev ; photography, Sergei Vasiliev ; essay, Alexei Plutser-Sarno ; editor, Honey Luard ; translator, Andrew Bromfield. Photographs taken between 1989 and 1992. "The photographs, drawings and texts published in this book are part of a colelction 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."- Volume 1 dust jacket.