FUEL

Danzig Baldaev: Drawings from the Gulag

Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell.

Drawings from the Gulag consists of 130 drawings by Danzig Baldaev (author of the acclaimed Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series), describing the history, horror and peculiarities of the Gulag system from its inception in 1918. Baldaev's father, a respected ethnographer, taught him techniques to record the tattoos of criminals in St. Petersburg's notorious Kresty prison, where Danzig worked as a guard. He was reported to the K.G.B. who unexpectedly offered support for his work, allowing him the opportunity to travel across the former U.S.S.R. Witnessing scenes of everyday life in the Gulag, he chronicled this previously closed world from both sides of the wire. With every vignette, Baldaev brings the characters he depicts to vivid life: from the lowest "zek" (inmate) to the most violent tattooed "vor" (thief), all the practices and inhabitants of the Gulag system are depicted here in incredible and often shocking detail. In documenting the attitude of the authorities to those imprisoned, and the transformation of these citizens into survivors or victims of the Gulag system, this graphic novel vividly depicts methods of torture and mass murder undertaken by the administration, as well as the atrocities committed by criminals upon their fellow inmates.
Danzig Baldaev was born in 1925 in Ulan-Ude, Buryatiya, Russia. In 1948, after serving in the army in World War II, he was ordered by the N.K.V.D. to work as a warden in the infamous Leningrad prison, Kresty, where he started drawing the tattoos of criminals. His collection of drawings, which he made in different reformatory settlements for criminals all over the former U.S.S.R. over a period of more than 50 years, have been published by Fuel in three volumes, in the bestselling Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series.

Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volume I

Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell. Foreword by Alexei Plutser-Sarno. Text by Danzig Baldaev. Photographs by Sergei Vasiliev.

Occasionally a book is published that reveals a subculture you never dreamt existed. More rarely, that book goes on to become a phenomenon of its own. The 2004 publication of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia was such a phenomenon, spawning two further volumes and alerting a fascinated readership worldwide to the extraordinary and hermetic world of Russian criminal tattoos (David Cronenberg, for example, made regular use of the Encyclopaedia during the making of his 2007 movie Eastern Promises). Now, Fuel has reprinted volume one of this bestselling series, whose first edition already fetches considerable sums online. The photographs, drawings and texts published in this book are part of a collection of more than 3,000 tattoos accumulated over a lifetime by a prison attendant named Danzig Baldaev. Tattoos were his gateway into a secret world in which he acted as ethnographer, recording the rituals of a closed society. The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and sometimes just strange, reflecting as they do the lives and traditions of Russian convicts. Skulls, swastikas, harems of naked women, a smiling Al Capone, medieval knights in armor, daggers sheathed in blood, benign images of Christ, sweet-faced mothers and their babies, armies of tanks and a horned Lenin: these are the signs by which the people of this hidden world mark and identify themselves. With a foreword by Danzig Baldaev, and an introduction by Alexei Plutser-Sarno, exploring the symbolism of the Russian criminal tattoo.

DRESSING FOR PLEASURE IN RUBBER, VINYL & LEATHER
Edited by Jonny Trunk, Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell.
ISBN: 9780956356239 | US $32.95
Forthcoming | Awaiting stock

DANZIG BALDAEV: DRAWINGS FROM THE GULAG
Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell.
ISBN: 9780956356246 | US $32.95
Forthcoming | Awaiting stock

RUSSIAN CRIMINAL TATTOO ENCYCLOPAEDIA VOLUME I
Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell. Foreword by Alexei Plutser-Sarno. Text by Danzig Baldaev. Photographs by Sergei Vasiliev.
ISBN: 9780955862076 | US $32.95
Active | In stock

RUSSIAN CRIMINAL TATTOO ENCYCLOPAEDIA VOLUME III
Introduction by Alexander Sidorov.
ISBN: 9780955006197 | US $32.95
Active | In stock

SPIRIT: GARDEN INSPIRATION
Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell, Anna Benn, Huw Morgan.
ISBN: 9780955862083 | US $45.00
Active | Awaiting stock

BIBLIODYSSEY: AMAZING ARCHIVAL IMAGES FROM THE DUSTY CORNERS OF THE INTERNET!
Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell. Foreword by Dinos Chapman. Text by PK.
ISBN: 9780955006166 | US $34.95
Active | In stock

CRIME
Edited by Alix Lambert, Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell, Ariana Speyer.
ISBN: 9780955006180 | US $45.00
Active | In stock

JAKE CHAPMAN: THE MARRIAGE OF REASON & SQUALOR
ISBN: 9780955862052 | US $595.00
Active | Awaiting stock

A PROCESS REVEALED
Edited by Andrew Waugh, Karl-Heinz Weiss, Matthew Wells. Text by Henrietta Thompson.
ISBN: 9780955862069 | US $34.95
Active | In stock

JAKE CHAPMAN: THE MARRIAGE OF REASON & SQUALOR
ISBN: 9780955862045 | US $100.00
Active | Awaiting stock

NOTES FROM RUSSIA: HAND-MADE STREET NOTICES
Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell. Text by Alexei Plutser-Samo.
ISBN: 9780955006173 | US $32.95
Active | In stock

FLEUR OLBY: PLANT PORTRAITS
Designed and edited by Murray & Sorrell.
ISBN: 9780955006104 | US $35.00
Active | In stock

MATCH DAY: OFFICIAL FOOTBALL PROGRAMMES
Edited by Paul Kelly and Bob Stanley. Introduction by Brian Glanville.
ISBN: 9780955006142 | US $55.00
Active | In stock

RUSSIAN CRIMINAL TATTOO ENCYCLOPEDIA VOLUME II
Introduction by Anne Applebaum. Foreword by Alexel Pluster-Sarno. Photographs by Sergey Vasiliev. Drawings by Danzig Baldaev.
ISBN: 9780955006128 | US $25.00
Active | Awaiting stock

JAKE CHAPMAN: THE MARRIAGE OF REASON & SQUALOR
ISBN: 9780955862007 | US $32.95
Active | In stock

HOME-MADE: CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN FOLK ARTIFACTS
Edited by Vladmir Arkhipov. Foreword by Susan B. Glasser.
ISBN: 9780955006135 | US $34.95
Active | Awaiting stock

IDEAS HAVE LEGS: IAN MCMILLAN VS. ANDY MARTIN
Introduction by Mark Radcliffe.
ISBN: 9780955006159 | US $25.00
Active | Not available

ALIX LAMBERT: CRIME
Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell, Ariana Speyer.
ISBN: 9780955862021 | US $300.00
Active | Awaiting stock

JAKE CHAPMAN: MEMOIRS OF MY WRITER’S BLOCK
Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell.
ISBN: 9780956356208 | US $24.00
Active | In stock