Part of Photomonth Photography Festival 2025, the exhibition was held in the main festival location, Mile End Arts Pavilion.

“In just a few decades we humans have altered our world beyond anything it has experienced in tens of millions of years. Our planet is said to be crossing a geological boundary – from the Holocene epoch into the Anthropocene.

The layers of rock strata being created under our feet today will provide evidence of an unprecedented human impact on our planet. Future geologists will find huge concentrations of plastics, the fallout from the burning of fossil fuels, and vast deposits of cement used to build our cities. The number of wild animals on Earth has halved in the past 40 years. We are causing creatures and plants to become extinct by removing their habitats.

Humans have left the countryside for the city. We have separated ourselves from the land we once roamed, and from other animals. But somewhere deep within us the desire for contact with nature remains. So, 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.

The Anthropocene Illusion reveals not only a phenomenon of denial and collective self-delusion, but also a desperate craving for a connection to a world we have turned our back on.” – Zed Nelson, The Anthropocene Illusion, Guest Editions