Fauxtography

Are hoax photographs harmful propaganda? harmless fun or Peter Dench has a rummage around the history of hoax photography to find out more

- Peter Dench

What is a hoax photograph? What are they for, why are they done and what is the point of them? Can there be a legitimate place in photography for hoax pictures? Is a hoax photograph harmless, when does it become cheating and can it be a criminal act? I have questions. Writing for this magazine I’ve come across various hoaxes. Who can forget Jonas Bendiksen’s extraordinary The Book of Veles, that hoodwinked the industry into thinking his documentary photographs of people from the eponymous town were legitimate? Researching for an article on ethics in wildlife photography, I came across photos of a frog riding a beetle, a snail riding a frog riding a turtle and five frogs riding a crocodile. These seemingly cute and funny hoax images were often cruel or deadly with subjects being glued, clamped, taped, wired, refrigerated, shaken or killed before being positioned for a photo. In 2010 the Wildlife Photographer of the Year winner, José Luis Rodriguez, was stripped of his prize after judges found he was likely to have hired a tame Iberian wolf to stage the image. In 2016 a winning entry by Marcio Cabral was disqualified for featuring a stuffed anteater after it was decided it was ‘highly likely’ a taxidermy specimen. Aren’t these just high-level hoaxes? If they were NFTs I’d gamble they’d prove collectable.