Zed Nelson

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Zed Nelson, born Zik Nelson in Uganda in the late 1960s, is a British documentary photographer and filmmaker based in London. He creates long-term projects about social issues.

Early life and education
Nelson grew up in Hackney, East London, from about age three. He left school at 16 and later studied fine art photography at the Polytechnic of Central London. He began his career in 1990 as a freelance photojournalist for major outlets and worked in conflict zones around the world. A 1994 ambush in Kabul led him to move away from frontline war reporting.

Major works and awards
- Gun Nation (late 1990s): A look at guns in America. It won the Visa d’or Feature Award at Visa pour l’Image in 1998 and a First Prize at World Press Photo in 1998. Prints from Gun Nation are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
- The Family: A long-running project photographing the same family every year since 1991 (and continuing).
- Love Me (2009): A book about the global beauty industry and how beauty standards are created and spread; it won a First Prize from Pictures of the Year International in 2010.
- The Anthropocene Illusion: A project about the relationship between humans and the natural world. It won Photographer of the Year at the 2025 Sony World Photography Awards.
- The Street (2019, film): A feature-length film about gentrification in Hoxton Street, Hackney.
- Hackney: A Tale of Two Cities (2014): A study of extreme wealth and poverty in Hackney; some work appeared in the book A Portrait of Hackney (2014).
- 2015 project: Photographed the homes of Britain’s billionaires.
- Shelter in Place (2009): Exposes issues in the petrochemical industry in Texas.
- Europe’s Immigration Disaster (2014): A film about the 2013 Lampedusa migrant shipwreck.
- The Gun Nation film (2016): A follow-up to the book, featuring interviews with people connected to guns in America.

Publications and collections
Nelson has published and shown books and exhibitions from these projects, and his work is held in major collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Personal life
Nelson lives in London and continues to work on long-term documentary projects that explore how people live and the forces shaping society.