The Book of Veles

Third printing (2022)

Medium format hardback in new condition

No markings

From Bendiksen’s website

Veles is a provincial North Macedonian town of 40,000 inhabitants which placed itself on the world map in 2016 as an epicenter for fake news production. The town has lost much of its economic base in recent decades an enormous steel smelter, a porcelain factory and other industry lie abandoned. During the 2016 US Presidential election, tech-savvy local youth created hundreds of clickbait websites posing as American political news portals, intending to earn quick money from viewer ad clicks. As the Veles fake news articles were spread to millions of people via Facebook and Twitter algorithms, many of these news hackers made substantial sums, and the sites may very well have contributed to the election of Donald Trump as president of the USA.

I travelled to Veles to explore this unlikely hub of misinformation. The photographs of contemporary Veles are intertwined withexcerpts and facsimiles from a 1919 archaeological discovery also called the Book of Veles a cryptic collection of 40 ancient wooden boards discovered in Russia by an army officer, written in a proto-Slavic language. It was claimed to be a history of the Slavic people and the god Veles himselfthe pre-Christian Slavic god mischief, chaos and deception. While popular among Slavic nationalists, the text is debunked as a forgery by most scientists.

In my newBook of VelesI interweave these two different Veles stories, representing historical and current efforts at producing disinformation and chaos.