George Marazakis Photographs The Anthropocene

Greek photographer, George Marazakis, takes the Anthropocene as both concept and title for a series that looks at a new epoch engendered by the greed of mankind.

After 12,000 years of stable climate, the current geological period—Holocene—is ending, humanity’s effect on Earth has been so catastrophic that it has caused a new epoch to begin. Defined by radioactive elements scattered by nuclear bombs across the “An external observer could describe it as an autoimmune disease attacking its own body”planet, plastic pollution, and power stations, the Anthropocene is an era in which human activity is the dominant influence on both climate and environment. Human existence, Marazakis notes, is paradoxically both disease and cure for the earth: “If we assume that humans, and by extension, human civilization, is a product of nature”, he explains, “an external observer could describe it as an autoimmune disease attacking its own body.” Through our greed, we are destroying the earth, but it is such greed that could also save it. “The ecological movement does not aim at the salvation of the planet,” Marazakis explains, “but at the salvation of human existence on the planet.” In his series ‘Anthropocene’ he explores the eeriness of human intervention on the landscape, the sadness of its broken parts and the way in which the natural world, so spectacular, has been shaped so unfortunately by humankind.