FUEL

Each of these objects is personal, and has a personality, a story. In an age of in-built obsolescence, there's something very radical in that. - Owen Hatherley, Tribune magazine A reprinted edition of the highly popular book from 2006. Home Made Russia features over 220 artefacts of Soviet culture, each accompanied by a photograph of the creator, their story of...

The Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive presents highlights from FUEL's singular collection of authentic material on this subject. Previously unpublished in its original form, this work comprises ink on paper drawings by Danzig Baldaev, the photographic albums of Arkady Bronnikov, and prisoner portraits by Sergei Vasiliev. The selection is contextualised with insights from Mark Vincent PhD, an author and academic specialising...

Chosen as one of the Best Architecture and Design books Summer 2022 by the Financial Times. Why British record store carrier bags are graphic design icons: While they've never carried the kudos of sleeve designs and music posters, record shop bags offer a fascinating insight into 20th century British music culture, high-streets and more. - Creative Review Jonny Trunk's extensive...

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...

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 hypnotic 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 It features previously unpublished drawings and photographs from...

Brutal Bloc Postcards by Stephen Sorrell, FUEL, and Damon Murray is a collection of previously unpublished postcards from the former Eastern Bloc.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, and heroic worker statues—this collection of Soviet era postcards documents the uncompromising landscape of the Eastern Bloc...

An incredible collection of images of chess players from the last 130 years, showcasing the unique relationship between chess and culture, featuring world-famous actors, artists, politicians, and musicians. You don't have to play chess to appreciate Chess Players: from Charlie Chaplin to Wu-Tang Clan, but as Martin Amis asks in his illuminating essay: What are they playing at? These evocative...

Small garages and service stations are a vital - but fast disappearing - part of Britain's automotive landscape. Often independently owned and sited in idiosyncratic buildings, they are rightfully celebrated and sensitively documented in this essential book. You might use a local garage to change a tyre or replace your exhaust, but when was the last time you pulled over...

Despite the borders of the USSR being closed to the majority of its population, Soviet citizens were among the world's most frequent flyers. Following the 1917 Revolution, Vladimir Lenin made the development of aviation a priority. Assisted by advertising campaigns by artists such as Alexander Rodchenko, Soviet society was mobilised to establish an air fleet. From the very beginning of...

The first book of its kind—a car book like no other—offering a deeply nostalgic look at beautiful vintage cars through the superb literature, leaflets, and pamphlets that sold them to us. Auto Erotica covers the gamut of motoring in Britain during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. These rare ephemeral booklets are full of unusual graphic ideas and concepts. Their fabulous...

Ukraine's overlooked modernist buildings are under threat from development, decommunization and war. Photographer Dmytro Soloviov has crossed Ukraine documenting them to form the most comprehensive publication available on the subject. What does Ukrainian Modernist architecture look like and why isn't it better-known in the West? Photographer and architectural tour guide Dmytro Soloviov is fighting to preserve the disappearing modernist heritage...

London is Patrick Keiller's highly imaginative psychogeographic journey through (and history of) London, as undertaken by an unnamed narrator and his companion, Robinson. The unseen pair complete a series of excursions around the city, in an attempt to investigate what Robinson calls 'the problem of London', in so doing the palimpsest of the city is revealed. London is a unique...

'A rare and astonishing book, a glimpse of a deeply secretive world that has taken the author a lifetime to penetrate. It reveals more graphically than any Gulag history the unreformed horror of Russia: the lack of law, the rule of violence, the brutality, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. And yet it is filled with a poignance and a sense of personal...

In recent years, Russian cities have visibly changed. The architectural heritage of the Soviet period has not been fully acknowledged. As a result, many unique modernist buildings have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition. Russian photographer Arseniy Kotov intends to document these buildings and their surroundings before they are lost forever. He likes to take pictures in winter, during the...

Charles Holden's designs for the London Underground from the mid-1920s to the outbreak of World War II represent a high point of transport architecture and Modernist design in Britain. His collaboration with Frank Pick, the Chief Executive of London Transport, brought about a marriage of form and function still celebrated today. Pick used the term 'Medieval Modernism' to describe their...

The book includes examples from the 1960s through to the 1980s, but focuses on posters produced during Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign initiated in 1985. These posters attempted to sober up Soviet citizens by forcing them to confront the issues associated with excessive alcohol consumption. This government-led urgency allowed the poster designers to present the anti-alcohol message in the most graphic terms:...

French photographer Jason Guilbeau has used Google Street View to virtually navigate Russia and the former USSR, searching for examples of a forgotten Soviet empire. The subjects of these unlikely photographs are incidental to the purpose of Google Street View—captured by serendipity, rather than design, they are accorded a common vernacular. Once found, he strips the images of their practical...

This beautifully produced boxed set of 53 postcards contains stunning images from the best-selling Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series of books. These hugely popular and influential books document the Russian criminal tattoo, revealing their hidden meanings. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes; their tattoos were a secret tribal language, a method of showing status within...

Since the first atomic bomb was dropped, humankind has been haunted by the idea of nuclear apocalypse. That nightmare almost became reality in 1986, when an accident at the USSR's Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant triggered the world's worst radiological crisis. The events of that night are well documented, but history didn't stop there. Chernobyl, as a place, remains very much...

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...

Photographer Christopher Herwig has covered more than 30,000 km by car, bike, bus and taxi in 13 former Soviet countries, discovering and documenting these unexpected treasures of modern art. From the shores of the Black Sea to the endless Kazakh steppe, these bus stops show the range of public art from the Soviet era and give a rare glimpse into...

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...

Stunning photographs of Soviet Metro Stations from across the former states of the USSR and Russia itself, many of which have never previously been documented. "For us," said Nikita Khrushchev in his memoirs, "there was something supernatural about the Metro." Visiting any of the dozen or so Metro networks built across the Soviet Union between the 1930s and 1980s, it...

A fantastic collection of Soviet Asian architecture, many photographed here for the first time Soviet Asia explores the Soviet modernist architecture of Central Asia. Italian photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego crossed the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, documenting buildings constructed from the 1950s until the fall of the USSR. The resulting images showcase the majestic,...

Spomenik Monument Database is the first-ever spomenik guidebook, featuring over 75 examples alongside map references and information on why they exist and who built them. Spomenik, the Serbo-Croat/Slovenian word for 'monument', refers to a series of memorials built in Tito's Republic of Yugoslavia from the 1960s-1990s, marking the horror of the occupation and the defeat of Axis forces during World...

Russian Alphabet Colouring Book for all ages marks the first publication of the graphic works of Russian artist Amanita. His fantastical images form a unique world—they are like modern variations of illustrated manuscripts, packed full with elements of Soviet and post-Soviet cultures. The book also works as an introduction to the Russian alphabet. Every drawing depicts a word beginning with...

Containing over 140 exclusive photographs - ranging from private homes to football stadia - across every region of the country, Brutalist Italy is the first publication to focus entirely on this subject. Best books of 2023 (Architecture and Design) - Financial Times 'Brutalist Italian architecture enthusiasts and concrete completists will be spoilt for choice by Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego's...

This book features over 180 photographs and accompanying texts of Russian criminal tattoos from the Arkady Bronnikov collection. From the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, Bronnikov worked as a senior expert in criminalistics at the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. Part of his duties involved visiting correctional institutions of the Ural and Siberia regions. It was here that he interviewed,...

Drawings from the Gulag consists of 130 drawings by Danzig Baldaev 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 he worked as a guard. He was reported to the KGB who unexpectedly...

The first book to tell the visual story of the USSR's war against religion of all denominations, from the 1917 revolution to its fall in 1991. 'We've finished the earthly tsars and we're coming for the heavenly ones!' Thus spoke the Soviet Union's first atheist propagandists as they declared war on 'the opium of the people' across the USSR. Soviet...

A fascinating photographic study of the previously overlooked Soviet sanatoriums and their treatments - stunning eastern bloc architecture meets crude-oil baths and radon water douches. Visiting a Soviet sanatorium is like stepping back in time. Originally conceived in the 1920s, they afforded workers a place to holiday, courtesy of a state-funded voucher system. At their peak, they were visited by...

A follow-up to the hugely successful Soviet Bus Stops, with new photographs of bus stops in Russia, Crimea, Georgia and Ukraine. Christopher Herwig has an insatiable appetite for Soviet Bus Stops. After the popular and critical success of his first book, Herwig has returned to the former Soviet Union to hunt for more. In this second volume, as well as...