Chris Jordan Artwork

Photo Source: PopTech

Chris Jordan is an artist best known for depicting mass consumption and waste through his innovative and stylish photography titled “Running the Numbers“.  Its hard to fully describe the greatness of his work, one has to experience it.  Essentially what Chris Jordan does is take mind-boggling statistics often cited by environmentalist, like “1.14 million paper bags are used at U.S. supermarkets every hour”, and constructs a portrait.  Using a zoom feature, one can enhance the photograph to see that the image is actually made of the exact number of items he cites in his statistic.  Its truly amazing.  He has photographs on everything from light bulbs to packing peanuts.

For me, as interesting as his “Running the Numbers” photographs are, his most powerful work is a series of photographs titled, “Midway: Message from the Gyre“.  This series focuses on the effects of the Great Pacific Gyre on birds.  Our plastic through rain and littering gets swept into rivers.  The rivers lead the trash into the ocean, and the currents of the ocean create a gyre in the Pacific Ocean.  Our plastic trash constantly circles this gyre and breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces until some wildlife, like birds or fish mistake it for food.  Sounds terrible, but its even worse when you witness this environmental devastation in Chris Jordan’s photography.  Below is a sample of his work.