The Book of Veles

The sleepy North Macedonian town of Veles put itself on the world map as the epicenter of fake news production during the 2016 US election. Tech-savvy local youth created hundreds of clickbait websites posing as American news portals, making quick cash as the sites were spread to millions of people via social media algorithms.

International media crews flocked to Veles to report on this unlikely hub of disinformation, and I followed suit. During my travels I discovered that Veles is also the name of a shapeshifting, Slavic bear- god known for spreading chaos, mischief and lies. The myth of Veles is also told in a purported ancient manuscript, which after having fooled people for decades, is now considered a forgery.

Using these stories as a backdrop, I created The Book of Veles; a 2021 photobook which was widely praised by the documentary photography community, until a mysterious social media profile named Chloe Miskin eventually revealed it as something very different from what it appeared to be. The Book of Veles is both a reckoning with my own history as a classical photojournalist as well as an experiment to see where technology might lead photography in the immediate future. The work is a quagmire of fake photo reportages, AI generated material, avatars and Facebook trolls, with which I aimed to probe our ability to spot synthetic images.