Jim Marshall - Peace

128 pages
Text(s) by Peter Doggett, Joan Baez and Shepard Fairey
Photos by Jim Marshall
24.1 x 18.4 cm
Language: English
Hardcover
Publisher: Reel Art Press
2017

Jim Marshall's unseen "peace" photographs, collated and published here for the first time, are a timely document for our world today. Almost 60 years after the creation of the CND peace symbol, this body of work is a beautiful and thoughtful reflection from one of the most celebrated photographers of the twentieth century. It is introduced with a foreword by renowned street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey and text by Peter Doggett. Folk singer Joan Baez provides the book's afterword.
Marshall saw himself as an anthropologist and a journalist, visually recording the changing times and explosion of creativity and celebrity in the 1960s. He loved street photography, and in between official assignments, started documenting the CND peace symbol and peace rallies as a personal project. He tabled these images on an index card in his archives labeled with the peace sign, where they remained until now.
The CND symbol was designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The symbol spread from the UK to the anti-war campaign in the US. Marshall's photographs were taken mainly between 1961 and 1968 across America and chart the progression of the symbol from a "Ban the Bomb" specific protest, to an internationally recognised symbol of peace. He captured street graffiti in the New York subway, buttons pinned to hippies and students, and West Coast peace rallies held by a generation who believed, for a brief moment, they could make a difference.