In the paper today was an image from Zed Nelson's book: 'The Anthropocene Illusion'. It's a painted wall in a zoo, but who is the painting for? Not the occupant of the cage...
On his Facebook page, Zed says:
After six years of working on ‘The Anthropocene Illusion’, the project (and I) have won the Sony World Photography Award 2025.It couldn’t be better timed with the book coming out on May 15 (on pre-sale now).
Lovely to get some love and real support at a nerve-wracking moment in the project’s launch.
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The short summary is:
‘While we destroy the natural world around us, we have become masters of a stage-managed, artificial ‘experience’ of nature - a reassuring spectacle, an illusion.’
In a tiny fraction of our Earth’s history, we humans have used our power to exploit the Earth and other animals. Scientists are calling it ‘The Anthropocene’ - the age of human.
Since the industrial revolution we have broken our ancient bonds with nature and devastated the natural world. We have concentrated in cities and divorced ourselves from the land we once roamed and from other animals. Yet we appear unwilling to face the true scale of our loss.
The Anthropocene Illusion reflects on how - at a time of environmental crisis - a consoling version of ‘Nature’ has beén packaged as a choreographed ‘experience’, an illusionary spectacle designed to reassure.
.
The short summary is:
‘While we destroy the natural world around us, we have become masters of a stage-managed, artificial ‘experience’ of nature - a reassuring spectacle, an illusion.’
In a tiny fraction of our Earth’s history, we humans have used our power to exploit the Earth and other animals. Scientists are calling it ‘The Anthropocene’ - the age of human.
Since the industrial revolution we have broken our ancient bonds with nature and devastated the natural world. We have concentrated in cities and divorced ourselves from the land we once roamed and from other animals. Yet we appear unwilling to face the true scale of our loss.
The Anthropocene Illusion reflects on how - at a time of environmental crisis - a consoling version of ‘Nature’ has beén packaged as a choreographed ‘experience’, an illusionary spectacle designed to reassure.
There are some links from Zed's Facebook page and Instagram to some further images from the project which looks awesome and very tied in with ideas of cultural geography. Congratulations to Zed on winning this presigious award.
Image copyright: Zed Nelson / Guest Editions.
Here's the book. I think I need a copy...
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