Bruno Vandermueren Author

Bruno Vandermueren was born in 1977 and grew up in the vicinity of Brussels airport. From a young age he developed a keen interest in aviation and in 1998 he graduated with a degree in Aviation Technology from Ostend college. The airport of this Belgian coastal town was popular among aviation enthusiasts as in the 1990s it was a stopover for many of the newly formed Russian cargo airlines. It was here that the author photographed many of the former Aeroflot Ilyushin and Antonov planes. Since 1998 he has worked as an aircraft engineer and aircraft maintenance operations coordinator for European Air Transport (DHL) and now TUI (Touristik Union International). Over the last twenty-one years, he has collected Soviet Aeroflot material, accumulating the largest collection in the world. He has flown on many Soviet aircraft and continues to travel to the former Soviet republics hunting for Aeroflot artefacts. Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell have been publishing critically acclaimed books on Soviet culture since 2004 with their Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia. More recent titles include Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide, Soviet Cities, Spomenik Monument Database and Soviet Bus Stops.