Chris Jordan Runs the Numbers

The latest photographic work of Chris Jordan brings awareness and human scale to everyday consumption patterns in the United States. In the project, titled Running the Numbers, An American Self Portrait, distant statistical numbers are suddenly put into perspective and visualized as oversize composite images, illustrating the intensity of industrial society.

In one example, a wall-sized photograph depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number of bottles used in the United States in five minutes. Another massive image shows 1.14 million brown paper bags, representing the amount consumed every hour. Other images include plastic bags (60,000 every five seconds), jet trails (11,000 flights in eight hours) and retired mobile phones (426,000 each day).

Jordan's oversize images bring the viewer into an emotional space and connect the individual to collective behavior and its consequences. Seeing the aggregate effect of American consumption shows us collective action will be the only way to move towards sustainable resource use patterns and solve environmental problems.

[Chris Jordan - Photographic Arts]