The Book of Veles

From the Archives: World Press Photo contest 2022

The Book of Veles was published in April 2021 as a documentary project on the production of fake news in Veles, a provincial North Macedonian town which placed itself on the world map in 2016 as an epicenter for fake news production. Six months after the project's publication, Bendiksen revealed that it was a forgery. All the people portrayed are computer-generated 3D models. The backgrounds of the images were made by photographing empty spaces in Veles and then converted into 3D spaces. The project questions the ease at which fake news can be produced, circulated and believed.