Sergei Vasiliev — Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia

Here are a few fascinating black and white photographs from Sergei Vasiliev. These pictures are published in the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia. You can find an interresting review of this book by design expert Rick Poynor on Eye Magazine's blog.

Pieter Wisse — I Believe in 88

I am a long time reader of the excellent 500 photographers blog. I have to give some credit to Pieter Wisse, photograph, who is also the writer of this blog. He specializes in portraits and journalism photography and he recently published a book called I Believe in 88. The book is a documentary about the time he spent with neo-nazis in Wismar (East Germany).

Project statement: "After a violent encounter with a group of neo-nazis at the age of 14 where Pieter Wisse was stabbed in the stomach, he decided to take a closer look at the daily life of the people who call themselves neo-nazis in former East Germany, a group of people at the edge of our society."

Here is Pieter Wisse's conclusion to the book: ... I personally did not encounter any evil animals. The people I documented deeply believe in their extreme rightwing ideas. Violence is part of their lives and critical to acquiring status in the group. This puts them on the edge of society. Characteristic are equally their pride and loyalty towards comrades and family.Vanity and the craving for attention gave me the freedom to register the fineline between hate and love.

Peter Beste — True Norwegian Black Metal

Peter Beste is a photographer from Texas who has spent time in the Norwegian Black Metal scene to document it. He has published a book called True Norwegian Black Metal. It is a large format book, with superb pictures (you can see there's been a lot of care at the graphic design of this book). The book is a fascinating look at the Black Metal scene and it's extreme tendencies. Even if the pictures sometimes outline the ridiculous of dressing up as evil warriors to take a walk in the streets of a Norwegian suburb, it is a sincere attempt at understanding and even appreciating this marginal subculture [I already shared my appreciation of Black Metal in this blog].

Burzum — Filosfem

Black metal is probably one of the most marginal musical genres. It is, not surprisingly, the genre that makes the most efforts to be marginalized. New albums are released on cassettes with photocopied artwork, sound is dirty and low-fi, imagery is morbid or shocking. Everything is calculated to make it as unpleasant as possible to the majority of people. Black metal has been in existence since the 80's. However, it is in Norway during the 90's that a little group of friends were to make the music known to the world. Murder, church burnings, satanic statements did the headlines of Norwegian press in the 90's.

Burzum is the one-man band of Varg Vikernes, one of the figures of 90's Norwegian black metal (later imprisoned for murder and church burnings). He released a few surprisingly good albums, different from what black metal was used to sound like at the time. This genre was later called atmospheric black metal.

Filosofem is my favorite Burzum album. It has a minimalist sound, often repetitive, very low-fi and dirty. Varg coined the term necrosound to describe it. Dunkelheit, the opening track of the album is pretty good and you can feel yourself transported to a nightmarish universe listening to it. It's a music that evokes nature and pagan rituals (like the beautiful artwork of Theodor Kittelsen on the cover. Towards the end of the album there is two ambient electronic music tracks, very simple, sometimes too simple but I like them. One of them is 25 minutes!

Musicianship isn't impressive but it is very expressive within the limit of the musician. A little bit like a children's drawing, naive art or primitive paintings. This album succeeds in being touching, with limited resources. Varg Vikernes isn't a great composer but he's an artist with a vision. Altough I prefer to enjoy his music and keep a distance from his ideas (an idiotic mix of fascism and paganism).

Surprisingly, black metal is getting fashionable nowadays (much to the despise of "true black metallers"). There is a new american black metal scene, sometimes labeled "hipster black metal", with a more artsy approach. But we can definitely hear in these groups the influence of Burzum (Wolves in the Throne Room and Liturgy).