It could also be exacerbated by the camera pincushion effect, and the head race is most definitely a scaling artifact. The OP's fork does look a tiny bit worse than mine.

It's possible my bike could have been in a slight front-end crash, too, before I bought it. It was a garage queen for 25 years- still had the original cosmolene on the chain- I could believe the original owner did a slight header into a curb as he was learning to ride, then lost interest and hung it up in the garage.