Email scams from Africa turned into graphic posters

By Michael Lithgow, April 10, 2008 Comments (1)

We've all received them -- pleading emails from far away places offering big sums of money in broken English for the temporary use of our bank account. The situation is always urgent, and all we need do is give them details of our account and then sit back and watch the money roll in ... or so they say.

East German born Henning Wagaenbreth has assembled 36 of these scam emails and illustrated them as pop culture posters. The illustrations are chaotic and humorous renditions of the stories told in the scams. The illustrations have been assembled using woodblock, linocut and primitive typography.

The book is called Help, 36 Email Scams from Africa and is published by Gingko Press.

Wagenbreth is a visual artist and professor of visual communication at Universitat der Kunste in Berlin.