Toothpicks, 2007 - 60" x 99" - Depicts 8 million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees harvested in the US every month to make the paper for mail order catalogs.
Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait
by Photographer/artist Chris Jordan
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books.
Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.
~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007 www.chrisjordan.com [1]
ED. Note: Please know that the pictures in this series are not "Photoshop creations." What you're looking at is the actual number of actual toothpicks, cans, cell phones etc. as enumerated in the captions.
Click on any image below to see all images in a larger size.
Plastic Bottles, 2007
60x120"
Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.
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Paper Bags, 2007
60x80"
Depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour.
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Cell Phones, 2007
60x100"
Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.
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Office Paper, 2007
60x87"
Depicts 30,000 reams of office paper, or 15 million sheets, equal to the amount of office paper used in the US every five minutes.
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Cans Seurat, 2007
60x92"
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.
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Denali Denial, 2006
60x75"
Depicts 24,000 logos from the GMC Yukon Denali, equal to six weeks of sales of that model SUV in 2004.
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Ben Franklin, 2007
8.5 feet wide by 10.5 feet tall in three horizontal panels
Depicts 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills ($12.5 million), the amount our government spends every hour on the war in Iraq.
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