Domesday Book

by Peter Kennard

This book combines poetry, photography and photomontage to create a narrative of our time as we approach the Millennium. Kennard's narrator is a wandering figure who arrives at the Millennium Dome as it is still under construction. In a fragmentary and hallucinatory fashion, the narrator flicks through images of the 20th Century as though seeing the images on a projector. This attempt to find a new form for the photographic book is a creative example of the The Critical Image series, which was commissioned to illustrate the links between photography and power, and to reveal how photography builds a sense of reality and promotes "national interests." As the foremost practitioner of photomontage, Kennard is responsible for expanding and furthering the subject of photography itself.

Paperback

First published March 16, 2000

About the author

Peter Kennard is a London-born and based photomontage artist and Professor of Political Art at the Royal College of Art. Seeking to reflect his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement, he turned from painting to photomontage to better address his political views. He is best known for the images he created for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the 1970s–80s including a détournement of John Constable's The Hay Wain called "Haywain with Cruise Missiles".

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting. Brilliant.