Captivating images expose a 'staged version' of nature

A Maasai man looks out at Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve. But this is no pristine wilderness: behind him are the remnants of a “champagne picnic experience” for tourists.

“Tourists are paying for the privilege of re-enacting a scene from a colonial film,” says photographer Zed Nelson. “The Maasai warrior is being paid to add authenticity to the scene.” The image is part of Nelson’s series The Anthropocene Illusion, which won him Photographer of the Year at the Sony World Photography Awards last month and is featured in a new book of the same name. Nelson travelled to 14 countries to create the series, which shows how, as the world spirals deeper into environmental crisis, a stage-managed version of nature is proliferating.

In another photo from the series, onlookers observe a whale shark at China’s Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, the world’s largest aquarium (pictured above). “It’s an enormous creature with an enormous range in its natural habitat, which raises serious questions about the ethics of keeping it there,” says Nelson. Pictured below, a snow cannon produces artificial snow at a ski resort in the Dolomite mountains in Italy. Around 90 per cent of Italian ski resorts now rely on artificial snow to remain open.

“The series is, in essence, about how we have divorced ourselves from the natural world, and are in the process of destroying it,” says Nelson. “It looks at how an artificial version of nature has proliferated – I would argue to hide from ourselves what we have done, and to satisfy our craving for a communion with nature.”