For centuries, Russian prison inmates forcibly initiated newcomers with tattoos. Gradually, prisoners developed a secret form of communication with their tattoos, allowing them to establish rank among the other inmates and maintain a clandestine hierarchy. This book explores the grisly reality of Russian prisons and the people who inhabit them. Over 190 black and white and color photographs expose the different tattoos and their meanings, ranging from churches, crosses, Christs, Madonnas, military symbols, cats, dolphins, bears, hawks, and other startling images. Documentary filmmaker Alix Lambert traveled around modern Russia to film these sinister environments, collected stories to identify the dying art of tattooing in Russian prisons, and detailed the lives of the heavily marked inmates, past and present. This fascinating, spine-tingling book provides an entirely new outlook on tattoos and what they can represent!

Russian Prison Tattoos: Codes of Authority, Domination, and Struggle

Politics & Social Sciences

Lambert, Alix

Christ, Mary

Social Sciences

Schiffer Pub. Ltd

How much do criminal acts and their representation in cinema, literature and music really have in common? Is the execution of crime in everyday life as appealing or as inspired as creative artists have made it seem since, say, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Moriarty? Does the film industry continue to learn from the real-life Mafia, or have the imaginings of scriptwriters had their own effect on organized crime? And what experience do these people who mold our perceptions of crime and criminals have of the real thing? This remarkable book is the first to explore our images of crime by interviewing those involved on, in and around all sides of the law, both real and fictional, and often somewhere in between. Through a series of exclusive interviews with artists, authors and actors such as Ben Affleck, David Cronenberg, Elmore Leonard, Viggo Mortensen, Ice-T, David Mamet and Takeshi Kitano, as well as real life bank robbers, gangsters and current prison inmates, editor Alix Lambert (artist, photographer of Russian prisoners’ tattoos and writer for HBO’s Deadwood) explores the gaps and overlaps between real crime and its representation in the arts, each commenting on and assessing the impact of the other.

Crime: A Series of Extraordinary Interviews Exposing the World of Crime―Real and Imagined

Humor & Entertainment

FUEL

Movies

FUEL Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lambert, Alix. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lambert, Alix