Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

@earth

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Country
  
United Kingdom

Genre
  
Art, non-fiction

Language
  
Visual, non-verbal

Author
  
Peter Kennard assisted by Tarek Salhany

Subject
  
Politics, climate change, human rights, economics

Published
  
2011 (Tate Publishing Ltd)

@earth is a 2011 book made by the London born (and based) photomontage artist Peter Kennard with Lebanese artist Tarek Salhany. It is a photo-essay told through photomontage with seven chapters exposing the current state of the Earth, the conditions of life on it and the need to resist injustice. It was released on 1 May 2011 by Tate Publishing.

Apart from the title @earth (which is also in different languages on its back cover) the pocket book contains no words and its story is told in sequences of constructed images.

@earth combines images created digitally over the preceding two years by Kennard with Salhany especially for the project, with Kennard's earlier darkroom based photomontages (spanning over 40 years of work) some of which are part of the Tate Permanent Collection. They have been recontextualised for the book. The authors met when Kennard taught Salhany at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London.

Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, said of @earth: "This book 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. If there's a word that's worth a thousand pictures, it's @earth."

@earth was launched during a 3-day event called shooting@earth at Black Rat Projects in London, together with a display of artworks by War Boutique. The centrepiece was a paintball shooting gallery where visitors could fire at silhouetted figures of city bankers. Starting concurrently, an exhibition of works from the book was held at Raven Row in London. The exhibition included prints of the digital works pasted on the gallery walls by dr.d as well as Kennard's earlier montages

References

@earth Wikipedia