Stephen Sorrell

Architecturally diverse and ideologically staunch, Soviet sanatoriums were intended to edify and invigorate. Visiting a Soviet sanatorium is like stepping back in time. Originally built in the 1920s, they afforded workers a place to holiday, courtesy of a state-funded voucher system. At their peak they were visited by millions of citizens across the USSR every […]

In the process of decommunisation, Ukraine has toppled all its Lenin monuments. Photographer Niels Ackermann and Journalist Sébastien Gobert have hunted down and photographed these banned Soviet statues, revealing their inglorious fate. As Russia celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Ukraine struggles to achieve complete decommunization. Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of this […]

Russian Criminal Tattoo Police Files Volume I features more than 180 photographs of Russian criminal tattoos and official police papers from the collection of Arkady Bronnikov, regarded as Russia’s foremost authority on criminal tattoo iconography. From the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, Bronnikov worked as a senior expert in criminalistics at the USSR Ministry of […]

This book reveals the importance of playing cards in Russian criminal culture. The hand-made decks are beautiful works of art in their own right. Prohibited by the prison authorities, they are constructed from innocuous materials procured from the everyday routine of prison life. During construction both the cards and their designs are adroitly manipulated so […]

On the heels of his bestselling Soviet Bus Stops, photographer Christopher Herwig locates fresh wonders of the Soviet vernacular in Georgia, Ukraine and Russia itself. After the popular and critical success of his first book, Soviet Bus Stops, photographer Christopher Herwig has returned to the former Soviet Union to hunt for more. In this second […]