In 1968, amid the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in London and the global upheavals that followed, Peter Kennard turned from painting to photomontage in search of a more direct political language. STOP emerged from that moment.
Working with images drawn from newspapers and magazines — civil rights marchers, bombed landscapes, military parades, protest crowds — Kennard re-photographed, layered, scratched and overlaid them with autographic marks. The result is neither documentary nor illustration, but a sustained visual argument. Across its pages, production and destruction collapse into one field: factory and battlefield, crowd and target, machine and flesh.
This is an entirely visual book, yet it asks to be read. Images recur and fracture. Blots, scratches and stencilled marks disrupt photographic realism, breaking pictures down to the minimum signs of human presence in struggle. The viewer is not offered explanation or consolation. Instead, the work demands active engagement — a recognition of the systems that organise violence as routine and normal.
First conceived in the wake of 1968 and developed over many years, drawing on struggles in Vietnam, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Chile, Palestine and elsewhere, STOP remains disturbingly current. It does not present war as aberration but as method; not peace as resolution but as managed inequality.
The book’s title is neither slogan nor sentiment. It is a demand made in full knowledge of the apparatus it confronts — and of what it would take, materially and collectively, to bring it to an end.
Table of Contents:
Images
Peter Kennard
Afterword
About the Author :
Peter Kennard (b. 1949) is one of Britain’s most influential political artists and a pioneer of contemporary photomontage. Since the late 1960s his work has shaped the visual culture of protest, addressing war, nuclear weapons, state violence and corporate power. His images have circulated widely beyond the gallery — in newspapers, posters and campaigns — and are held in major public collections throughout the world.
A long-time Professor of Political Art at the Royal College of Art, Kennard has consistently sought new visual languages capable of confronting power.
Review :
Peter Kennard has been producing his politically radical photomontages for 50 years. We need people who carry on fighting the good fight. People who keep their focus despite the changing cultural and political landscape. The message is consistent – the message is clear – the message is true. The message is uncompromising, brutal and hard-hitting – but also very beautiful, it’s beautiful because it wants to keep us alive. It’s a jolt of electricity. A shot in the arm. A kick up the backside. You know what? It’s a wake-up call.
Jarvis Cocker
Peter Kennard’s work is a harrowing x-ray of the shadow side of the world that perfectly captures the brutal asymmetries of our age: heavy weaponry trained on broken people, all-seeing technologies and disappearing identities, perpetually exhaling industry and an asphyxiating planet.
Naomi Klein
Peter Kennard’s images communicate a vital message of resistance against violence and war. These previously unseen, early images mark the beginning of his iconic art of photomontage which spans cultural, political and geographic divides with an enduring urgency.
Ben Harman, Senior Curator of Photography, National Galleries of Scotland
Searing stark images of war and repression, by one of the world's great masters of political art. STOP reminds us why it is so important, and necessary, to defend peace and human rights.
Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner
Peter Kennard's art became a political weapon from 1968 onwards. He became the John Heartfield of our generation and his pens and paintbrushes are still firing.
Tariq Ali
Kennard is a no-nonsense political artist who proves again and again that the frightening image is just as mighty as the sword.
Waldemar Januszczak, Art Critic and TV producer and presenter
