Anthropocene and the City

The strangest thing about this remarkable return of “humankind” into history is that the Anthropocene provides the clearest demonstration that, from an environmental point of view, humanity as a whole does not exist.

—C. Bonneuil, J.-B. Fressoz

My current work centers around the concept of man’s ‘geological’ impact on the planet - the Anthropocene - and our collective perception of nature within the context of ongoing industrial-scale reformatting of our worldwide urban and natural habitats. My images capture the surreal juxtaposition of the built world alongside artificial representations of the natural world. The ‘natural’ content of the images - in the context of advertisements, hoardings or government sanctioned beautification (esp. China) - alongside new or decaying urban infrastructure, are an interrogation of human imaginings of ‘nature’ as a shared but ultimately artificial vision. 

Humankind and its relationship with nature and nature itself are merged as one and the same thing; a distinction proponents of Anthropocene theories point towards - that there is no longer a dividing line between nature and the artificially man-made, our physical impact on Earth is indelible. Continuous entropic social, political and ecological forces push us ever onwards towards a jointly imagined ‘constructive catastrophe’. Our instinct to manifest and to reimpose disarmingly artificial representations of nature into our manufactured urban spaces hints at a troubled and unsettled human psyche as we sink deeper into the Anthropocene age.