By Brockett Horne
Image: Chris Jordan’s Plastic Bottles, 2007 (detail)
This summer, I’m pondering the enormous weight of numbers:
426,000 cell phones retired every day
9 million American children with no health insurance
12000 plastic bags are used every minute
400,000 plastic water bottles tossed every minute
$60 to fill up my Honda with gas! Ouch!
Artist Chris Jordan presents compelling images that overwhelm with the magnitude of collective consumption. His haunting photographs depict, through repetition, our incomprehensible mass imprint on the world. His images really function as infographics, and illustrate statistical data through the lens of the camera just as effectively as a chart or graph.
Through scale and texture, he presents the undisputed quantifiable visual with clarity. Not unlike an impressionist painting, Jordan’s images draw us in as mysterious tableau from far away but with revealing precision when close up. His images are seductively beautiful, which is part of their ironic power. American consumption is not beautiful from close up or from far away.
Image: Cell Phones #2, Atlanta 2005 (detail)
Enjoy more views on his gallery website:
I wasn’t able to browse the website through my iphone. But now using my laptop on windows 7 it looks fine. Any idea why?