Peter Kennard’s STOP, an unseen anti-war book first conceived in 1968, has been published for the first time as global conflict returns to the forefront.
As global conflict once again dominates headlines, a long-unseen work by Peter Kennard arrives with renewed urgency.
First conceived in 1968 amid the upheaval of the Vietnam War, STOP, an unpublished and previously unseen book, is now being released for the first time. Entirely visual, it marks a pivotal moment in Kennard’s practice, when he turned away from painting and towards photomontage in search of a more direct, confrontational language.
Across its pages, press imagery is cut, scratched and reassembled into sequences that resist passive viewing. Photographic realism is broken down into something more unstable — a visual field where power, violence and resistance collide.
Rather than documenting individual events, STOP frames war as a system: organised, repeated and normalised. The book unfolds less as narrative and more as accumulation — a relentless build of images that demand to be read.
A harrowing x-ray of the shadow side of the world that perfectly captures the brutal asymmetries of our age.
Naomi Klein
Kennard, one of Britain’s most influential political artists, has spent decades shaping the visual culture of protest. Since the late 1960s, his work has moved fluidly beyond the gallery, circulating through newspapers, posters and activist campaigns while addressing war, nuclear threat and state power.
A long-time Professor of Political Art at the Royal College of Art, he has consistently pushed for image-making that confronts rather than reflects. He has described STOP as his most complete work — a sustained expression of both his political position and artistic method.
More than half a century after it was first conceived, its release feels less like a return to history than a reflection of the present.
Uncompromising, brutal and hard-hitting – but also very beautiful. It’s beautiful because it wants to keep us alive. It’s a wake-up call.
Jarvis Cocker
Thread-sewn, OTA binding, with flaps
Cover: Munken Pure 240 gsm
Text: Munken Arctic Matt 135 gsm
BUY: HERE
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MuseumsEtc is an independent publisher for photography, social history and political books based in Edinburgh but working internationally with a constellation of thinkers, image makers, storytellers and orators. museumsetc.com
