Prison Photography
Herbert Hoffman’s Tattoos and Photography
“From an early age, Herbert Hoffmann (1919-2010, b. Pommern, Germany) was drawn to people with tattoos. He was educated in Berlin. During the Third Reich, tattooed people were seen as criminals and consequently, the tattoo culture diminished. In 1940, Hoffman signed up for basic military service with the German army. From 1945-49, Hoffmann was held prisoner of war by the Russians. When he returned to Germany he worked as a travelling salesman, and encountered many persons who were tattooed despite the old Nazi ban. While working Hoffmann always took along his camera and photographed the people he met. In 1961, Hoffmann opened his own tattoo studio in Hamburg, Germany.
Hoffman distinguishes himself from photographers who look in at the tattoo culture from the outside. He defined the culture and then adopted the lion’s share of documenting it. Hoffman’s DIY method is like that of graffiti artists who return with a camera to make images of the surfaces which they have earlier decorated. (Notably, Hoffman’s tattooing preceded the rise of graffiti and its recognition as art/culture in the 1970s/80s.)
Aged 91, Hoffman passed away on June 30th of this year. Despite the indisputable novelty of his photographs, and his central position to German tattoo culture, Hoffman only received mainstream recognition very late in life. No surprise really; Hoffman was working with the maligned, ‘lowly vernacular’ medium of photography, to record the re-emerging tattoo subculture.” [Resource]
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The Tattooed skin of Polish prisoners
“Foto8: “The tattoo collection at the Department of Forensic Medicine at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland consists of 60 objects preserved in formaldehyde […] The tattoos were collected from the prisoners of the nearby state penitentiary on Montelupich Street as well as from the deceased on whom autopsies were performed.”
It should be said, figuring out what messages are involved in prison tattoos is common across all nations, systems and eras. Although, this is the first collection I know of that separated the tattoos from corpses.”
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Prison Tattoos and the Photographers’ Intrigue
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Sergei Vasiliev’s Photographs in the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia
“Sergei Vasiliev‘s photographs of Russian Criminal Tattoos are part of a three part encyclopaedia/archive on the subject. Vasiliev photographed between 1989 and 1993 in prisons and reform settlements across Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Perm and St. Petersburg.
Vasiliev’s portraits are accompanied by over 3,000 tattoo drawings made byDanzig Baldaev during his time as a prison guard between 1948 and 1986. Baldaev had supported of the KGB who used his illustrations to develop intelligence on the convict class.
Three volumes of the encyclopaedia have since been published by FUEL Designs:
” [The documentation of] Tattoos were Baldaev‘s 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 provocative, reflecting as they do the lives and traditions of convicts.”
“The accompanying photographs by Sergei Vasiliev act as an important counterpart to Baldaev’s drawings, providing photographic evidence of their authenticity. […] In these images the nameless bodies of criminals act as both a text and mirror, reflecting and preserving the ever-changing folklore of the Russian criminal underworld.”
Baldaev’s drawings and Vasiliev’s portraits are currently being exhibited at 4 Wilkes Street, London E1 6QF (30 October to 28 November 2010).
http://vimeo.com/14960241
Mariya Mileva 