The Anthropocene Illusion
© Zed Nelson“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 altered our world beyond anything it has experienced in tens of millions of years. Scientists are calling it a new epoch, ‘The Anthropocene’ - the age of human.
Future geologists will find evidence in the rock strata of an unprecedented human impact on our planet - huge concentrations of plastics, fallout from the burning of fossil fuels, and vast deposits of concrete used to build our cities. The number of wild animals on Earth has halved in the past 40 years. We are forcing animals and plants to extinction by removing their habitats.
We have broken our ancient bonds with nature, divorcing ourselves from the land we once roamed and from other animals. Yet we cannot face the true scale of our loss. Somewhere deep within us the desire for contact with nature remains. So, while we destroy the natural world around us, we have also become masters of a stage-managed, artificial ‘experience’ of nature, a reassuring spectacle, an illusion.
Over six years, across four continents, Zed Nelson has examined how we humans immerse ourselves in increasingly simulated environments to mask our destructive divorce from the natural world. From theme parks, zoos and natural history museums, to national parks, African safaris and alpine resorts, his work reveals not only a global phenomenon of denial and collective self-delusion, but also a desperate craving for a connection to a world we have turned our back on.
‘Everywhere animals disappear. In zoos they constitute the living monument to their own disappearance.’
John Berger (1926 - 2017). ‘Why Look at Animals’.
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.
The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord
The Anthropocene Illusion reflects on how—at a time of environmental crisis—a consoling version of nature has been packaged as a commodified, curated experience, designed to mask our divorce from the natural world.
The number of wild animals on Earth has halved in the past 40 years.
Today, more tigers exist in captivity than in the wild.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
Charles Darwin reduced humans to just another species – a twig on the grand tree of life. But now, the paradigm has shifted: humankind is no longer just another species. We are the first to knowingly reshape the living earth’s biology and chemistry. We have become the masters of our planet and integral to the destiny of life on Earth.
Surrounding ourselves with simulated recreations of nature paradoxically constitutes an unwitting monument to the very thing that we have lost.
Just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat.
In 1989, the writer Bill McKibben (in his book The End of Nature), foresaw a moment when our environment would exceed the capabilities of our environmental language. The remade Earth, McKibben further argued, would set record after record—hottest, coldest, deadliest—before people realized the need for new ways of keeping score. But inertia is an intellectual proposition as well as a physical one; for a long time, he suggested, confronted with evidence of a changing world, humans would refuse to change their mind.
Medea, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, said, “I can see - and I approve the better course, and yet I choose the worse.”
Today, social media and the internet’s ceaseless flow of information and visual stimulation have birthed a state of unreality, where we are no longer looking for truth, but only a kind of amazement.
Our future as a species depends on urgent new assessments of humanity’s relationship to the natural world - requiring intentional acts of culture, with paradigm shifts in priorities and empathies.
Zed Nelson
The Anthropocene Illusion, by Zed Nelson, will be published as a book by Guest Editions - release date 15 May, 2025.
Spiraling
© David MaiselClimate scientists from Brigham Young University recently warned that if emergency measures are not enacted immediately, Utah’s Great Salt Lake could disappear by 2028. The entropic conditions of human-induced climate change and drought are tipping the region into a desiccated dead zone. In Spiraling, I chart the environmental crisis point that the imperiled Lake is rapidly approaching.
Few lakes rival the Great Salt Lake in size and significance — it is the largest saline lake in the United States and the eighth largest in the world. However, drought conditions caused by regional climate change and industrial development have caused the Lake to decrease in scale by more than two-thirds in the past forty years. The surface area of the Lake has declined from 3,330 square miles in 1980 to a record-low 950 square miles in 2021.
In addition, because the Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake (meaning it has no natural outlets), over the past century it has become a repository of arsenic, dioxins, mercury, PCBs, and other toxins from the mining industry as well as from agricultural runoff. As more of the lakebed becomes exposed due to the Lake’s depletion, the surrounding atmosphere will become increasingly poisoned by toxic airborne dust emanating from the playa.
As Terry Tempest Williams has written: “On any given day, dust devils are whipping up a storm in these hot spots, blowing mercury- and arsenic-laced winds through the Wasatch Front, where 2.6 million people dwell, with Salt Lake City at its center. Arsenic levels in the lakebed are already far higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommendation for safety. And with the state’s population projected to increase to 5.5 million people by 2060, the urgency to reverse the lake’s retreat will only grow.”
Maisel has been working in the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake for nearly forty years. “Spiraling is my latest chapter responding to this environmental disaster, which is unfolding with increasing urgency. I was drawn to the region by the Kennecott Copper Mine and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty; I made aerial photographs of the massive open pit copper mine as part of my Black Maps series in 1988 and photographed the Spiral Jetty as part of my Terminal Mirage series in 2003.”
A measure of the Lake’s disappearance can be gauged by Spiral Jetty, which was constructed on the shoreline of the Lake in 1970. In the era of Terminal Mirage, the Jetty appears as a ghostly white form – as the waters of the Lake began to shift into a drought condition, the Jetty reemerged covered with salt crystals from decades of submersion beneath the briny water. In its critical drought condition shown in Spiraling, the water levels in the Lake have receded hundreds of feet from the artwork, leaving it completely exposed, stranded from the shoreline hundreds of feet away. It stands as a symbol of the Lake’s impending demise.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
Few lakes rival the Great Salt Lake in size and significance — it is the largest saline lake in the United States and the eighth largest in the world. However, drought conditions caused by regional climate change and industrial development have caused the Lake to decrease in scale by more than two-thirds in the past forty years. The surface area of the Lake has declined from 3,330 square miles in 1980 to a record-low 950 square miles in 2021.
In addition, because the Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake (meaning it has no natural outlets), over the past century it has become a repository of arsenic, dioxins, mercury, PCBs, and other toxins from the mining industry as well as from agricultural runoff. As more of the lakebed becomes exposed due to the Lake’s depletion, the surrounding atmosphere will become increasingly poisoned by toxic airborne dust emanating from the playa.
As Terry Tempest Williams has written: “On any given day, dust devils are whipping up a storm in these hot spots, blowing mercury- and arsenic-laced winds through the Wasatch Front, where 2.6 million people dwell, with Salt Lake City at its center. Arsenic levels in the lakebed are already far higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommendation for safety. And with the state’s population projected to increase to 5.5 million people by 2060, the urgency to reverse the lake’s retreat will only grow.”
Maisel has been working in the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake for nearly forty years. “Spiraling is my latest chapter responding to this environmental disaster, which is unfolding with increasing urgency. I was drawn to the region by the Kennecott Copper Mine and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty; I made aerial photographs of the massive open pit copper mine as part of my Black Maps series in 1988 and photographed the Spiral Jetty as part of my Terminal Mirage series in 2003.”
A measure of the Lake’s disappearance can be gauged by Spiral Jetty, which was constructed on the shoreline of the Lake in 1970. In the era of Terminal Mirage, the Jetty appears as a ghostly white form – as the waters of the Lake began to shift into a drought condition, the Jetty reemerged covered with salt crystals from decades of submersion beneath the briny water. In its critical drought condition shown in Spiraling, the water levels in the Lake have receded hundreds of feet from the artwork, leaving it completely exposed, stranded from the shoreline hundreds of feet away. It stands as a symbol of the Lake’s impending demise.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty photographed for Terminal Mirage series in 2003
They
© Myriam AbdelazizThe pronoun they is used by individuals who identify as non-binary or genderqueer, meaning they do not exclusively identify as male or female. These individuals may experience a gender identity that is fluid, outside the traditional gender binary, or a combination of genders. The use of they as a singular pronoun has gained increased recognition and acceptance in society to respect and affirm the identities of non-binary individuals. By using they as a gender-neutral pronoun, people can avoid assumptions and not assign a binary gender to someone who does not identify as strictly male or female.
The impact of recognizing and using gender-neutral pronouns like they is multifaceted. It helps promote inclusivity and acceptance of diverse gender identities, fostering a more inclusive and respectful society. It acknowledges and validates the experiences and identities of non-binary individuals, reducing the erasure and marginalization they may face. It also encourages others to be mindful of the language they use and consider the gender diversity that exists beyond the traditional binary.
Since the recent Presidential election, non-binary people are starting to face a mix of challenges regarding both their rights and societal acceptance. Trump’s administration has already rolled back on several protection for LGBT+ individuals including guidance on gender identity in schools and healthcare creating a more hostile environment for those identifying as non-binary or gender non-conforming.
This new political environment could lead to increased mental health challenges for non-binary individuals due to discrimination and stigma,
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
Girls’ Night
© Eimear LynchGirls' Night is a documentary photobook that captures the rituals of teenage girls in Ireland as they prepare for local discos. Eimear Lynch traveled across the country, from rural community halls in County Antrim to the bustling streets of Dublin, documenting the excitement and camaraderie of these young women during this formative stage of adolescence. The book offers an intimate glimpse into bedrooms and bathrooms where friends gather to do their hair, makeup, and choose outfits, highlighting the universal yet uniquely Irish aspects of coming-of-age. Released in 2024, Girls' Night features a foreword by designer Simone Rocha and writings by Gráinne McCullough, Marley Nolan, and Lynch herself.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
Publisher: IDEA Books Ltd.
Foreword by Simone Rocha
Writing by Gráinne McCullough, Marley Nolan & Eimear Lynch
Clothbound hardcover with tip-on image
30 x 23cm
128 pages
First edition of 500
Foreword by Simone Rocha
Writing by Gráinne McCullough, Marley Nolan & Eimear Lynch
Clothbound hardcover with tip-on image
30 x 23cm
128 pages
First edition of 500
LA Fires
© Robert LeBlancJanuary 2025,
Weather forecasters in California are warning fierce winds which fuelled the infernos around Los Angeles are expected to pick up again this week, as fire crews on the ground race to make progress controlling three wildfires.
Officials warned that after a weekend of relatively calm winds, the notoriously dry Santa Ana winds would pick up again reaching speeds of up to 60mph (96km/h).
Ahead of the wind's uptick, some progress has been made in stopping the spread of the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires burning on opposite ends of the city. Local firefighters are being assisted by crews from eight other states, Canada, and Mexico, who continue to arrive.
Institute Artist Photographer Robert LeBlanc has been capturing the fires, the devastation they have caused and the courageous firefighters desperately trying to extinguish the fires engulfing around 70 square miles of California.
click the link to view the images in the archive