The Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia, published in three volumes by FUEL, is a comprehensive look into the violent and fantastic world of prison tattoos. The volumes are made up of the work of Russian prison guard, Danzig Baldaev, and the drawings of tattoos he made between 1948 - 1986. Baldaev would make detailed notes of each tattoo and then reproduce them in his St. Petersburg flat - an exercise that resulted in an archive of 739 original sheets of drawings. In 2009, Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell (FUEL) purchased the entire archive of 739 original sheets of tattoo drawings from Baldaev’s widow and published the three books. The Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin recently opened an exhibition featuring the original works from FUEL's encyclopedias. The exhibition, Original Works from the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia, runs through to June 16, 2012.

Source - Galerie Max Hetzler

Adam Bryce