Zed Nelson photographs shock us all into seeing just how twisted our bond with nature has become

There's a particular irony in using a camera to document humanity's relationship with nature. Zed Nelson, the Sony World Photography Awards' Photographer of the Year 2025, has spent six years doing exactly that, and the results, now on show in London, are as beautiful as they are unsettling.

The exhibition is The Anthropocene Illusion, opening at Somerset House on April 17 as part of the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards exhibition, running until 4 May. It's the most expansive UK showing of the project to date, with previously unseen works alongside those that won Nelson the Photographer of the Year title last year.

What the pictures actually show

Look at the two images released ahead of the exhibition and the project's thesis becomes immediately apparent. The first (above) is a fish tank, its plastic coral rendered in colors too vivid to believe; its composition painterly and precise.

The second (below) shows rows of red deckchairs arranged before a painted tropical backdrop at an indoor swimming complex, a few oblivious figures wandering through the frame. Both images work because they resist editorialising. The lighting is measured, the framing cool. Nelson lets the strangeness speak for itself.

To my mind, that restraint is the work's greatest technical achievement. It would be easy to photograph these environments with satirical intent baked in, to make the fakery look ugly or comic. But Nelson does the harder, braver thing. He treats artificial landscapes with the same care he might bring to any serious documentary work, and trusts the viewer to feel the dissonance.

The broader series extends this approach to a wider range of subjects: holidaymakers on synthetic beaches, indoor rainforests, zoo dioramas and artificially lit aquariums. Nelson also turns his lens on what passes for real nature in the age of mass tourism: a traffic jam of SUVs inching through Yosemite National Park, a champagne breakfast on safari in the Maasai Mara, ski slopes kept alive by snow guns on a mountain that's quietly melting.

Building a visual case

The Anthropocene, the term the project takes its name from, refers to the proposed geological epoch defined by humanity's impact on the planet. The argument it makes is quite profound: that in a tiny sliver of Earth's history, one species has permanently altered the conditions of life for all the others.

Nelson has been building his visual case for six years across four continents. The cumulative effect is less a polemic, more of a lost lament, a record of the gap between what's disappeared and the simulations we have built to paper over it. Since the industrial revolution and the mass shift to cities, he argues, "ancient bonds with nature" have been broken, but the craving for connection remains, and commerce has been happy to supply a version of it.

The prize and what it means

The exhibition only exists, by the way, because of how the Sony World Photography Awards structures its top prize. Each year, the Photographer of the Year is given a solo platform at the following year's exhibition. Nelson's show is the direct result of that opportunity, and that's worth noting.

The Photographer of the Year 2026 will be announced at a gala on 16 April, chosen from the 10 professional category winners. The winner receives a $25,000 cash prize, Sony Digital Imaging equipment and the same platform Nelson now occupies: a solo show at the 2027 exhibition.

The Anthropocene Illusion is at Somerset House, London, April 17 to May 4 2026. The accompanying book is available from guesteditions.com. For more information visit worldphoto.org.