Chris Jordan's large-scale color photographs
portray the detritus of American consumption
Gaining access to some of the country's
largest industrial waste facilities,
Jordan photographs the refuse of consumer culture
(e.g., diodes, cell phone chargers, cigarette butts,
circuit boards) on an immense scale
Spanning up to ten feet wide,
Jordan's prints are at once abstract and detailed
The following photos depict 2.5 million plastic bottles,
the number used in the US every hour.
Visit Chris Jordan's site
Our culture is in deep denial
about what we are doing to our planet,
to the people of other nations
and the people of the future
And maybe the biggest tragedy of all
is that we are in denial about
how our consumer lifestyle
is sapping our own spirits
It is incredibly sad to see it
on such a huge scale
Chris Jordan:My current project is motivated in large part by the alarm I feel about where our society is headed.
I think American culture has gone over to the “dark side”; collectively we have given in to greed and made the gaining of wealth our cultural priority.
This comes at the expense of what some people hold most sacred: our connectedness to ourselves, to each other and to our planet.
It frightens me, and yet I still hold out hope, because for awhile I lost my own soul to the seduction of consumer culture and somehow I found my way to a more fulfilling life.
Now through this body of work I am seeking a way to connect with others around this issue.
It is tricky though because I know from my own experience that when you’re stuck in that money-driven place, no amount of preaching or finger-wagging will reach you; to make it in, my message has to be more subtle and respectful.
I know I still have a huge amount to learn about using photography as a persuasive tool; so far I think I’ve just scratched the surface of its potential that way.
I am frequently surprised how little negative feedback I get for my criticism of the American way of life.
Maybe it is because we all know it is true: that we are living insane lives governed by materialism and greed, and we want to change but we don’t know how.
Or maybe the lack of resistance is a reflection of the depth of our denial. When I exhibit my work and talk about our rampant consumerism, no one ever seems to think I am talking about them.
So I get very little anger or negative response; people take my side and speak zealously about consumerism, even if they drive a huge SUV and own three homes and work evenings and weekends to pay all their credit card bills.
This illustrates for me the complexity of the issue. Talking to Americans about consumerism is like talking to someone with an alcohol problem.
Our culture is in deep denial about what we are doing to our planet, to the people of other nations and the people of the future.
And maybe the biggest tragedy of all is that we are in denial about how our consumer lifestyle is sapping our own spirits. It is incredibly sad to see it on such a huge scale, and growing ever broader under our current leadership.
Today we are working more hours than any other society in the world. On average, Americans work three months longer per year than Europeans, who themselves work more than the people in most other countries. We are slowly killing ourselves, and we all feel it.
We look at simpler cultures in places like South America, and we crave their spirituality, their connectedness with the earth and with each other, the easiness of their smiles, their simple ways of joy and togetherness—and we feel this deep sense of longing. We know we are somehow getting screwed,
that all this stuff isn’t really satisfying, that we have lost something sacred that is related to the very core of our Selves. But still we don’t act.
Instead we get in our BMW’s and drive to our skyscrapers and shuffle our papers for all of the best hours of the best days of the best years of our lives so we can afford our new kitchen remodel.
It is a tragedy beyond belief, happening right here in our own country, under our own noses, to our own selves.
I think Americans in the first decade of the 21st century will be looked back upon by more evolved societies of the future as some of the most spiritually lost people in the history of humankind.
This new series of art works 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 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 above 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 still in its early stages, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.