artruby:FUEL present: Original Works from the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia at Galerie Max H
artruby:FUEL present: Original Works from the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia at Galerie Max Hetzler Taken between 1989 and 1993, Sergei Vasiliev’s photographs of Soviet prisoners document the secret code language of criminals in the USSR, evidence of a gritty spirit of picaresque resistance within a violently repressive culture.Raunchy, grotesque, filled in with insults against the authorities, the imagery developed its own formulas and conventions; for example, a skull means top criminality, a cat is a thief, and so on. To have no tattoos would have meant the lowest status, a lack of toughness; to have certain tattoos could be the sign of an untouchable. Far from being isolated illustrations from a catalogue in a tattoo parlour, Vasiliev’s photographs are a humanizing record that places the faces and bodies of the owners (at one point one in five of the Soviet population) right at the centre of the project. Text by Lupe Nùñez-Fernández -- source link
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