32,000 Barbies, 2 million plastic beverage bottles, 11,000 jet trails,, 426,000 cell phones

[ElsewheresDaughter]

Depicts 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the US in 2006.





Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.






Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours.






Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.






Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait

This 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 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The 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

[SeattleGirl]

1. I saw a piece on TV on the guy who did these.

I think it was Bill Moyers Journal, or Dan Rather Reports.

Pretty interesting.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

3. thank you so much for the reminder...I added the info on the artist

[DS1]

2. I hate these things

they depress me

[appal_jack]

4. wow.

powerful, relevant, imaginative depictions there.

I don't often rec threads in the Lounge, but K&R for a new way of looking at our image-obsessed, consumerist, frenetic society that has forgotten the importance of being in the moment, and that we are of the earth.

-app