LOCATION: Outdoor exhibition at Kasernplan. MAP
While we destroy the natural world, we have become masters of a stage-managed, artificial experience of nature – a reassuring spectacle, an illusion. In just a few decades, humans have altered the planet beyond anything it has seen in tens of millions of years. Scientists are calling it a new epoch, The Anthropocene – the age of humans.
The rock layers being formed today will testify to our unprecedented impact: huge concentrations of plastics, the fallout from burning fossil fuels, and vast deposits of cement from our cities. Wildlife populations have halved in the past forty years, and countless species are disappearing as we erase their habitats.
We have broken our ancient bonds with nature, divorcing ourselves from the land and from other animals – yet the desire for contact remains. Unable or unwilling to confront the true scale of our loss, we retreat into a hyper-curated, manufactured version of the world we are destroying.
Over six years and four continents, Zed Nelson examined how humans immerse themselves in increasingly choreographed and simulated environments to mask our devastating impact on nature. From zoos and theme parks, to African safaris, alpine resorts, and national parks, his work reveals both a global phenomenon of denial and a desperate craving for contact with a natural world we have turned our back on.
Zed Nelson is a London-based documentary photographer and filmmaker. He has pub-lished Gun Nation (2000), Love Me (2009), and A Portrait of Hackney (2014), and has received major international awards including the Visa d’Or and World Press Photo. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is held in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Nelson’s latest project, The Anthropocene Illusion (2024), was awarded Photographer of the Year at the Sony World Photography Awards 2025.
