![]() In minimum-security prisons, for example, 65 to 75 percent of the convicts have tattoos that figure increases to 80 percent in medium-security prisons, and to between 95 and 98 percent in maximum-security facilities. As their convictions increase and the terms of incarceration become more severe, the tattoos multiply. In most cases, the inmates interviewed by Bronnikov claimed that they started getting tattoos only after they had committed a crime. But the most common problem is lymphadenitis-an inflammation of the lymph nodes accompanied by fever and chills. This can easily create serious complications, including gangrene and tetanus. Because tattooing is forbidden by the authorities, the practice is pushed underground, and usually executed in unsanitary conditions. ![]() For health reasons it's best to use the urine of the person getting the tattoo. Scorched rubber mixed with urine is used for pigment. The drops of blood can signify the number of murders committed. The instrument of choice is an adapted electric shaver, to which prisoners attach needles and an ampoule of liquid dye.Ī dagger through the neck indicates that a criminal has murdered someone in prison and is available to hire for further hits. The process can take several years to complete, but a single small figure can be created in four to six hours of uninterrupted work. The majority of the tattoos would have been done in a primitive, painful way. What kind of equipment were they using to tattoo themselves? The number of logs on the fire underneath the victim denotes the number of years of the sentence. Their crimes vary from serious cases such as murder or rape to lesser offenses like pickpocketing and burglary.Įvery image carries a detailed caption explaining how individual tattoos relate to specific crimes-for example, a naked woman being burnt on a cross symbolizes a conviction for the murder of a woman. I then took the photographs back to London to be scanned.ĭo you have any information about the prisoners who were photographed?Īpart from a small section at the very beginning of the book, which reproduces a number of actual police files, all the information gathered about the criminals is done by reading the tattoos on their bodies. After a few days, it became apparent that there was enough material and information to make a book that was significant in its own right. We'd previously discussed the possibility of making a book, and he very kindly agreed to talk me through the material and discuss the intricacies of the subject in detail. Bronnikov at his home in the Ural region in Russia. How long did it take you to collect the photos? It tackles the same subject, but in a more visceral manner. ![]() We knew that this collection of unique material would make a fascinating book and be a perfect addition to our previous publications. It was then-between the mid 1960s and mid 1980s-that he interviewed, photographed, and gathered information about convicts and their tattoos, building one of the most comprehensive archives to date. A senior expert in forensics at the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs for more than 30 years, his duties involved visiting correctional institutions in Ural and Siberia. It was while researching Soviets that we came across an article about a retired policeman named Arkady Bronnikov. These books were based around the drawings of Danzig Baldaev, a prison guard who documented the phenomenon of the Russian criminal tattoo over the course of his career. VICE: Why did you want to publish this book?ĭamon Murray: At FUEL, we previously published the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series, as well as Drawings from the Gulag and Soviets-so there's an obvious pattern. I got in touch with Damon Murray, co-founder of FUEL, to talk about the book. Russian Criminal Tattoo Police Files, published by FUEL, is probably the largest collection of prison tattoo photographs to date, at 256 pages. Arkady Bronnikov, regarded as Russia's leading expert on tattoo iconography, recently released a collection of around 180 photographs of criminals locked up in Soviet penal institutes.
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