In a Britain bracing for uncertainty, a growing number of people are preparing for collapse.
The End Of The World As We Know It is an audio portrait series exploring the rise of individuals stockpiling food, building shelters, cultivating self-sufficiency, and quietly stepping away from systems they no longer trust.
Once considered fringe, preparedness has moved into the mainstream, accelerated by the pandemic, economic instability, political fragmentation, and climate anxiety.
What makes a prepper? In order to answer this question, Jonathan Donovan has travelled across Britain, meeting with a wide range of preppers in order to go beyond the stereotypes. He wanted to understand what drives preppers, how they see the future, and why it is that when two people hear the same warning, one acts and the other does not.
The 50 portraits position each subject within their chosen environment and take you on a journey through kitchens lined with supplies, meticulously organised sheds, improvised bunkers, suburban gardens turned survival plots, and inside ordinary British homes.
Accompanied by recorded testimonies, the work offers both visual immediacy and psychological depth.
For some of the preppers he met, online feeds are a conduit for increasingly violent fantasies. Many preppers are being subjected to a barrage of extremist fear-mongering, warnings of civil unrest, and fake news about jihadis in small boats. War. Invasion. Collapse. When this is presented as your future, day after day, fear can start to feel like common sense.
At a moment when public trust in governments and systems is eroding and even the ultra- wealthy speak openly about escape plans, The End Of The World As We Know It feels urgent, timely, and culturally resonant. The series speaks to contemporary anxieties while remaining deeply human — less about apocalypse than about agency.
The End Of The World As We Know It will be showing at Photofusion, Brixton from 19-23 January 2027.
ABOUT JONATHAN DONOVAN
Jonathan Donovan is a London-based portrait and reportage photographer working for a wide variety of clients and publications in the UK & internationally, with an interest in presenting important social issues in alternative ways.
His photographs are a space in which he can get close and observe people interacting and relating to each other and to their worlds, in a way that would otherwise be quite private.
Recent projects No Place Like Home, Single Parent Strength and On Collage have been shown at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Kings Cross, The Young Vic’s exhibition space Platform Southwark, and The Royal Academy of Art. No Place Like Home was acquired by The Geffrye Museum for their permanent collection.
Elsewhere, Jonathan's work has been featured by The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, BBC London Live, BBC Online, The Big Issue, Spiegel Online, The Associated Press, Huff Post, Kiosk Magazine & The Manchester International Festival.
Before becoming a photographer, Jonathan reported for The BBC World Service in east and south east Africa, and produced & presented Focus on Africa and Network Africa at Bush House.