A rare look inside Fuel’s legendary archive of Russian criminal tattoo culture.

This volume brings together authentic, previously unpublished material: Danzig Baldaev’s ink drawings with his handwritten notes, Sergei Vasiliev’s intimate portraits of inmates and Arkady Bronnikov’s forensic photo albums. Together, they form the most complete primary record of the coded tattoo language that defined the Soviet underworld.

Baldaev’s facsimile drawings appear on naturally aged paper, Vasiliev’s portraits reveal a hidden hierarchy with striking candor and Bronnikov’s investigative photographs show tattoos as police once documented them.

With contextual essays by experts Mark Vincent and Alison Nordström, Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive is the definitive resource on this powerful and mythologized visual tradition.