Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, Volume 1 by Stephen Sorrell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Drawing on first hand interaction with imprisoned criminals, this fascinating work documents, details, and explains the ink of Russian professional criminal and underworld denizens. Stretching back to the 40s, this includes insignia marking "legitimate thieves" (think Thieve's guild members), criminal elite ruling class, POWs, and more including tattoos forcibly placed on prisoners to mark them for insubordination, stealing from other thieves (the rat-fink tat), or losing at cards (winner picks art and loser pays). Tattoos to mark sexual enslavement and redemption are here. Most fascinating to me was the recurrent theme ones (Misha, the bear with the squeeze box, etc.) and German POW tattoos (very Heil Hitler), anti-Communist/anti-Marxist ones, and the rich taxonomy of indica for a criminal's area of expertise or placement in the underworld hierarchy.
There is mostly art here, which unfortunately is all B&W. About a third or less is photographs, generally of torsor or whole individuals. The rest is pen renditions. Only the pen drawings have detailed, explanatory text.
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