Yegor Letov

The portrait holds itself in black and white — like a photograph from the nineties, already a legend. Glasses, long hair, a cat in his arms — the one soft thing left in this image. His most recognizable line — "Я всегда буду против" ("I will always be against") — runs across his clothes, and in the word "всегда" the letter A becomes an anarchy symbol: sign and text fused, impossible to pull apart.

In ordinary light, that's all there is to see. Under ultraviolet, the wall behind him comes alive: barbed wire wraps around his head like a crown of thorns, "Гр.Об." (his band's nickname — a dark pun on "coffin") and "Punks Not Dead" emerge, cat's paw prints scatter across the whole surface — a quiet, almost tender counterpoint to all that sharpness. The punk underground was here the whole time, waiting for its light.

Happy birthday, Yegor Letov.