In 2016, the provincial North Macedonian town of Veles became known as a centre for fabricated American political news. Local producers built click-driven websites that imitated legitimate news outlets and circulated their stories during the United States presidential election. Jonas Bendiksen travelled there to examine this unexpected geography of misinformation; his photographs of the contemporary town form one strand of The Book of Veles.

A second strand reaches back to a purported archaeological discovery made in Russia in 1919. Also called the Book of Veles, it comprised 40 wooden boards said to bear a proto-Slavic account of Slavic history and of Veles, the pre-Christian god associated with mischief, chaos and deception. By placing fragments from this contested object among photographs of its modern namesake, Bendiksen connects two episodes in which credibility is manufactured through the appearance of historical or journalistic authority.

The book’s force lies in this interweaving rather than in a straightforward report on the town. Its repeated names, parallel narratives and shifts between contemporary observation and an asserted ancient past make reading itself part of the subject. Photographs cannot be approached as isolated records: their meaning is continually redirected by documents, stories and claims. The structure asks how readily an account acquires legitimacy when it is presented in familiar visual and textual forms.

Published by GOST Books in 2021, The Book of Veles belongs in a serious photobook collection for the precision with which its subject and construction reinforce one another. It records a particular site associated with the digital politics of 2016 while setting that moment against an older mythology of authenticity and deception. For collectors interested in documentary practice, photojournalism and the editorial sequencing of image and text, the book offers a focused case study in how photographs participate in systems of belief—not simply by showing the world, but through the narratives beside them.