Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates

An exploration of the motives, methods, and impacts of book and document forgers, fakers, and publisher-pirates over centuries.

Whether print or digital, text or image, artistic or scientific, rare or common, historic or contemporary, most of the content we encounter contains accidental mistakes—ranging from typos to factual errors to errors arising from prejudicial assumptions—and a significant proportion of it also contains deliberate misinformation resulting from various forms of forgery, fakery, and piracy. This exhibition catalogue introduces the work of notorious and lesser-known forgers, it reveals the various ways in which experts and authors have faked their own identities—ranging from carefully-selected pseudonyms to falsified ethnicities to fraudulent credentials—and it explores a number of shady publishing practices. We can all become better readers and better at protecting ourselves from scammers by improving our understanding of the nature of the content before us.