In a world where every piece of content can be manipulated and every image generated by an algorithm, can we be sure any information source is truly trustworthy? In her book ‘Encyclopaedia’, Weronika Gęsicka asks questions about the borders of trust, authenticity and fiction – and offers answers using images balancing a fine line between humorous and unsettling.
In a reality overloaded with information, where the boundaries between news, advertising and fiction are increasingly blurred, it is hard to identify sources that can be trusted unconditionally. Traditional forms of conveying knowledge, such as encyclopedias, seem to be losing their once-secure status. At the same time, there is a growing need today to rely on verified and trustworthy content. It is precisely within this tension that Weronika Gęsicka’s project finds its roots.
Falseness in service of the truth
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Weronika Gęsicka, 'Jungftak', from the cycle 'Encyclopaedia', collage, photography, 2023-2025, photo: Galeria Jednostka
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The foundation of Gęsicka’s project is a fascinating and little-known phenomenon: the deliberate insertion of fictitious entries into encyclopaedias, dictionaries and lexicons. Dating back to the 19th century, the practice was used by editors as a ‘trap’ for dishonest publishers. If a competing publication illegally copied the content, replicating the fabricated entry as well, it served as indisputable proof of plagiarism in court. These false entries were often masterfully disguised – stylistically indistinguishable from real ones, mixing plausible elements with total fantasy.
Gęsicka, making use of these fictional definitions, has forged her own ‘encyclopaedia’ – a collection of a few hundred entries, illustrated by images generated by AI.
Pictures & paradoxes
The book’s press release says that the artist found real publications – often unearthed via online auctions – with original examples of these false entries. She then transformed them into visual stories. Each illustration she has created acts as ‘photographic evidence’ of their existence.
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The resulting images teeter between pastiche and documentation. They often have a retro aesthetic, echoing the style of old school textbooks. Their power relies on precisely the fact that they look ‘a bit too real’ to have been fabricated, while at the same time they often include absurd elements that deprive them of trustworthiness.
Examples? There’s the fictional bird the jungftak, whose males only have right wings and females only have left wings, meaning they can only fly in pairs. Or there’s the Baldock beer disaster – an alleged 1904 event where beer barrels destroyed some city streets and killed a dog. Gęsicka treats these stories as starting points for creating images so convincing that the reader starts to mix up what’s real and what’s fiction.
The artist described her creative method in an interview with Anna Diduch for Przekroj:
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Entries found in old encyclopaedias became so-called prompts for artificial intelligence. The process involved analysing the results of AI-generated creations based on what I provided, selecting just a few dozen of the most on-point images from among the several thousand proposed. The difference between the encyclopaedia’s description and the AI’s proposal was often enormous. Perhaps the best example is the entry for a fictional bird species I found in Webster’s ‘New Twentieth Century Dictionary’, published in 1943. According to the definition, the male and female each have only one wing and can only fly after joining their bodies together with a specific bone. The AI couldn’t really cope with such an abstract concept.
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Anna Diduch, "Prawda i fikcja encyklopedii", Przekroj.org, data publikacji: 13.06.2024
AI & new forms of narration
Encyclopaedia is the only the latest chapter in Weronika Gęsicka’s reinterpretaion of photographic history and visual archives. The curator and photographic theoretician Charlotte Cotton emphasises in the text accompanying the photographs that the artist has worked for many years on seemingly innocent materials that reveal hidden tensions and mechanisms of control. For example, in her series Traces (2015-2017) and Smash (2019-2021).
In Traces, the artist made use of pictures from American advertisements from the 1950s and 1960s, interfering with them in a subtle, often surrealistic manner. Photos of ideal families and idyllic household scenes were given metaphorical and literal ruptures, suggesting cracks in the social narratives of many norms. In Smash, she worked with images of catastrophes, casting a critical eye on the aesthetics of tragedy in the media.
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Gęsicka has gone a step further in Encyclopaedia – she hasn’t just manipulated archival images, but has repeatedly created them from scratch. With the help of AI tools, the artist has illustrated phenomena that were impossible to see earlier. It means Encyclopaedia is also a story about creativity in the era of machines.
Cotton points to Encyclopaedia as a vision of the future in which artists become creators of alternate realities, with new technologies allowing them to revive narratives that had been silent up until now. On the other hand, this vision can leave us with some anxiety. Gęsicka’s book is a warning about the loss of the stability of knowledge and facts, which can now all be fabricated.
Displays & recognition
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Weronika Gęsicka, 'Encyclopaedia', photo: Galeria Jednostka
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Her Encyclopaedia project was presented in March 2025 in Madrid as part of the cultural programme accompanying the Polish Presidency of the EU Council. The exhibition took place in the i23 Gallery as part of Festival Ellas Crean, attracting much attention from its Spanish audiences. The exhibition was organised in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
In June 2025, the book was awarded Photographic Publication of the Year during Fotofestiwal in Łódź. Here’s how the jury explained their choice:
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For a story that is incredibly vital in today’s world – a narrative that highlights the power and responsibility of words, the fleeting nature of images, and the need to anchor their meanings within a community of experiences; for its excellent editing and lightness in addressing fundamental themes. Additional applause goes to the artist for her pioneering approach and consistency in her artistic endeavours: for creating a publication that seems to exhaust the topic of using generative images.
Other than the images themselves and the concept of the book, it’s worth appreciating the book’s design by Aneta Kowalczyk. Much like Gęsicka’s previous book Traces, it is an attractive and fascinating object. Details catch the eye, like the embossing on the cover or its coloured inner cover. The whole thing, including its enlarged size, reminds one of an old guidebook or atlas.
In search of support
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Weronika Gęsicka, 'Encyclopaedia', photo: Galeria Jednostka
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Gęsicka’s project is something more than just artistic play with form – it’s a critical look at the mechanisms that shape our knowledge and an attempt to answer a question: how can we possibly have faith in any source of knowledge today?
In a world where every piece of information can be manipulated, and images can be generated just to fit some concrete narrative, Gęsicka’s Encyclopaedia is a warning and invitation to reflect. It’s an artistic proposition for a new form of epistemology – one based on an awareness of fiction, irony and the ceaseless verification of truth. Who knows – perhaps in a few dozen years, this is how guidebooks will really look for generations brought up by algorithms?
Images: Weronika Gęsicka
Essay: Charlotte Cotton
Book design: Aneta Kowalczyk
Photo editors: Weronika Gęsicka, Katarzyna Sagatowska, Aneta Kowalczyk & Grzegorz Kosmala
Format: 225x300 mm
Pages: 252
Language: English
Circulation: 1500 copies
