Danzig Baldaev was a prison guard of Soviet Leningrad with an outstanding hobbie: between the years 1948 and 1986, he carefully reproduced the tattoos that he observed on the skin of the prisoners. He produced a collection of more than 3,000 ink drawings, classified and accompanied with handwritten notes, from his tiny St. Petersburg flat.
To understand and portray the complex symbology of the criminal tattoo was, as a matter of fact, Baldaev's gateway into the secret world of the convicted. We can say that his research made him act like an etnographer who recorded the rituals of a closed society. The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and provocative, reflecting as they do the lives, status and traditions of the convicts that wore them.
In 2004 the british group FUEL recovered Baldaev's work and published the first volume of the encyclopaedia, followed by two more volumes. In the books, Baldaev's drawings are complemented with images by Vasiliev, photographer for the newspaper Vecherny Chelyabinsk, who took up the baton with his portraits of tattooed criminals from 1989 to 1993.
Together, they make up an informed, systematic and exhaustive document about these art pieces on nameless bodies, that reflect and preserve the everchanging folklore of this criminal underworld.
For more information and/or to purchase the books, go to FUEL's website, link below.
CREDITS.
Publisher.- FUEL Publishers
Size.- 205 × 125 mm
Pages.- 400 pages
Hardcover.
ISBN Volumen I.- 978-0-9558620-7-6
ISBN Volumen II.- 0-9550061-2-0
ISBN Volumen III.- 978-0-9550061-9-7
