FUEL

A colourful photography book on this visually stunning vernacular artform, the images painted onto these trucks and tuks are a phenomenon, giving a unique insight into the rich cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent. White stallions and exotic birds frolic around a waterfall, glamorous Bollywood stars sing, a sunset-silhouetted couple bathe in the ocean – such are the images that adorn the trucks and tuks of the Indian subcontinent. These utilitarian vehicles provide a fertile canvas for the vernacular artists whose colour-saturated creativity covers every spare surface. Over four years, photographer Christopher Herwig (author of the Soviet Bus Stops series and Soviet Metro Stations) travelled 10,000 kilometres in his quest to record this overlooked artform. He has documented the characteristics of each region – from Pakistan in the north, where intricately painted trucks often have a curved wooden peak at the front, symbolizing a princess’ tiara; to Sri Lanka in the south, where tuk tuks might equally be painted with holy deities or the Joker from Batman. The designs reflect a driver’s identity, faith and aspirations and span a bewildering range of themes: ideals of masculinity might be intertwined with expressions of love and longing, while bold typography urges drivers to blow their horns or promotes a campaign for the education of girls. Sadly, as a result of government directives, alongside the proliferation of cheap, mass-produced decorations, this vibrant cultural expression is in decline, making this project all the more vital.

This vivid and fascinating collection of propaganda spans over a century – a visual feast illustrating how persuasion, manipulation and fear were used to influence populations around the world. Do you know what propaganda looks like? A mural showing Saddam Hussein on horseback. A colossal cut-out of Benito Mussolini mounted on Milan Cathedral. A film of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un parading an intercontinental ballistic missile. A Pakistani newspaper advertisement calling for ‘Jehad’ (sic). A soldier firing condoms from his gun in a Ugandan AIDS awareness and prevention campaign. A traditional Azerbaijani rug celebrating the achievements of Soviet space travel, with portraits of Gagarin, Tereshkova (and of course Lenin). Juxtaposing material from conflicting ideologies, Propagadopolis presents the broadest range of shocking, unusual and visually arresting images, encompassing all regions and eras of the modern age to demonstrate how propaganda has been wielded to evoke emotions, rally support or instill fear – to leave an indelible mark on the collective consciousness. Extended captions explain the fascinating stories behind this material, contextualising the strategies used by governments, agencies and individuals seeking to influence, deceive and demoralise through the use of propaganda. Containing many previously unpublished examples and with an enlightening introduction from Robert Peckham, author of Fear: An Alternative History of the World (2023), Propagandopolis is an essential visual guide to the enduring potency of the most pervasive, manipulative and persuading images of our time.

A complete standard Western deck of 52 playing cards and 2 jokers, making them suitable for any card game. This deck of cards has been put together using four different sets (one for each suit) made by Russian criminals in prisons during the 1980s. Prohibited by the prison authorities, they are constructed from innocuous materials procured from the everyday routine of prison life, their unique designs skillfully manipulated so that they could be read. The respect commanded by any criminal was directly related to his ability to play, and win, at cards. Being ‘lucky’ at cards was also seen as a good omen (even if the winner cheated, as this practice is acceptable within the thieves world). A thief could stake anything in a card game, a finger, an arm, the life of another inmate, or even his own. If he lost, the debt had to be paid immediately. The penalty for defaulting was expulsion, a forcibly applied tattoo or in some cases, death. Confiscated and destroyed by the authorities, original decks are difficult to obtain and often incomplete. The authentic designs reproduced here have been taken from original cards collected over the last ten years by the authors. A standard Russian deck contains only 36 cards. This pack has been adapted to make a complete standard Western deck of 52 cards.

A collection of previously unpublished postcards from the former Eastern Bloc – sinister, funny, poignant and surreal, they depict the social and architectural values of the period. Brutal concrete hotels, futurist TV towers, heroic worker statues – this collection of Soviet era postcards documents the uncompromising landscape of the Eastern Bloc through its buildings and monuments. They are interspersed with quotes from prominent figures of the time, that both support and confound the ideologies presented in the images. In contrast to the photographs of a ruined and abandoned Soviet empire we are accustomed to seeing today, the scenes depicted here publicise the bright future of communism: social housing blocks, Palaces of Culture and monuments to Comradeship. Dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, they offer a nostalgic yet revealing insight into social and architectural values of the time, acting as a window through which we can examine cars, people, and of course, buildings. These postcards, sanctioned by the authorities, intended to show the world what living in communism looked like. Instead, this postcard propaganda inadvertently communicates other messages: outside the House of Political Enlightenment in Yerevan, the flowerbed reads ‘Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’; in Novopolotsk, art school pupils paint plein air, their subject is a housing estate; at the Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute students stroll past a five metre tall concrete hammer and sickle.

The photographs, drawings and texts published in this book are part of a collection of more than 3000 tattoos accumulated over a lifetime by prison attendant 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 armour, 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.

'This is not solely an addendum to the previous volumes, but stands well on its own. The book's physical and emotional core lies in the Baldaev drawings, which are ethnographic, artistic, and surprisingly moving. His unflinching documentation reveals a world of systematic brutality and violence, where prisoners flaunted their savagery on their skin and punished their adversaries, poseurs, and the weak by etching humiliations into them.' - Alarm This is the final volume of drawings and photographs from Danzig Baldaev and Sergei Vasiliev, which completes the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia trilogy. Danzig Baldaev documented over three thousand tattoos during a lifetime working as a prison guard. His recording of this esoteric world was reported to the KGB who unexpectedly supported him, realising the importance of being able to establish facts about convicts by reading the images on their bodies. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics and alcohol. The illustrated criminals of Russia tell the tale of their closed society. With an introduction by historian Alexander Sidorov, exploring the origin of Russian criminal tattoos and their meaning today.

'A unique social document recording a now disappearing sub-culture. The criminals inhabit as desperate a nether world as you are likely to come across. A hipnotic aspect of art and words. ' - Index This second volume of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia is an essential companion to the critically acclaimed first volume. It features previously unpublished drawings and photographs from the extraordinary archives of Danzig Baldaev and Sergei Vasiliev. During his lifetime as a guard in St Petersburg's notorious Kresty Prison, Baldaev diligently recorded over 3,000 criminals' tattoos and their coded meanings. His drawings form a unique gallery; a passport into a hidden world of shovel-faced politicians, fornicating devils, messages tangled in barbed wire. Tattoos on hands, feet, legs, torsos, foreheads, eyelids, buttocks and genitals all take their place in this fascinating document of a rapidly disappearing criminal society, where history, status and even sexual preference are indelibly etched on the body. Introduction by Anne Applebaum, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.