The first part of a ten part interview with Sergei Vasiliev, whose photographs feature in the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volumes I – III.

In part one he explains how he first came across the phenomenon of criminal tattoos while working for the police in Chelyabinsk, Siberia, during the 1960s. He tells of how the inmates would undress for him to show off their tattoos – from the highest-ranking criminals to lesbians in the women's prisons.