"Running the Numbers" - Revisiting Chris Jordan

This evening I checked Chris Jordan Photographic Arts. I previously posted about Chris Jordan’s work on May 11, "Chris Jordan captures consumerism,"and July 23, "Visions of excess."

Currently Jordan is featuring a series titled, “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."

I picked the accompanying photo, a portion of the image of nine million wooden ABC blocks equal to the number of Ameican children with no health insurance coverage in 2007, because I took care of my twin 14 month grandchildren today. It would break my heart if either of became sick and couldn’t get adequate medical care because he or she lacked health insurance.

(photo: Building Blocks, 2007. 16 feet tall x 32 feet wide in eighteen square panels, each sized 62x62": Chris Jordan Photographic Arts)

Photographer Chris Jordan captures consumerism

“The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.”

These words were spoken by photographer Chris Jordan, which I found here.

Perhaps you, like I, have seen some of Chris’ photos but didn’t know who took them. On my most recent trip to help with my 3 month old grandchildren, my daugher-in-law Chrisy showed me an article about Chris Jordan in Common Ground magazine. Titled Statistics You Can See...And Feel, it described Jordan as a former corporate lawyer until 2003, now a photographer who is helping “people visually know the actual (and frightening) quantities of stuff consumed in America.”

At ChrisJordan.com, there are three categories for his online photos: “Running the Numbers,” “Intolerable Beauty,” and “In Katrina’s Wake.”

The photo, in the "Running the Numbers" series, represents the 426,000 cell phones retired in the U.S. every day.

I hope you’ll go to ChrisJordan.com and spend a little time looking at all of his photos. It’s an amazing experience, especially because we all, one way or another, are contributing to the subject matter of Jordan’s photos.