Zed Nelson spots the painting on the wall behind me almost as soon as we begin our interview.

“It’s perfect,” he said.

The canvas depicts a sleeping tiger draped across a velvet cushion, floating among pastel-shade leaves and flowers. The London-based photographer doesn’t mean “perfect” as in “masterfully painted;” he means it’s the perfect metaphor for the idealized, human-centric relationship we’ve cultivated with nature.

The painting reminds him of another artwork, “ A young Tiger Playing With Its Mother ,” by the French Romantic artist Eugene Delacroix, who used a captive tiger at a zoo and his pet cat as models.

“The Romantic movement in painting began with the human divorce from the natural world. As we removed ourselves from nature, and it receded from our imagination, we reen

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