HOAX

HOAX, a crowdfunded book by Polish photographer Agnieszka Sejud, is an extraordinarily vivid barrage of wildly patterned, digitally tweaked street scenes and details. What’s “real” and what’s been tampered with is called into question on every page. The images are printed full-bleed on thick, hyperglossy paper. The spreads come nestled together in a clear vinyl envelope, and the unbound pages, like the images themselves, feel tantalizingly on the verge of falling into creative chaos. The sequence weaves together photographs of religious and national iconography with acid-color scenes of everyday consumerism—a mash-up of the sacred and the kitsch that is simultaneously seductive and seditious. “While this is more a thrilling short story than a novel,” comments Martin, “it effectively delivers a sly and visceral critique of the manipulation of contemporary values in Poland (and elsewhere) today.”